Dracula discussion on MPR's Midmorning with Kerri Miller

As I mentioned earlier, my book club read Dracula last year and loved it. It spawned one of our best ever book discussions.

Here's audio of Minnesota Public Radio's Midmorning show from 10/26/10 (re-aired from 10/28/08) wherein Kerri Miller interviews Leslie Klinger, editor of "The New Annotated Dracula."

I love Jim Cantiello

He recaps Idol and Glee for MTV. His "Glee-caps" are in song. I share with you his Glee-cap from the Rocky Horror episode that aired last night, with a notable (to fans of Idol's Season 8) cameo.

MTV Shows

His writing for the Glee-caps is probably a tad less witty than his Idol recaps due to the extra challenge of putting them to music. His writing in his Idol-in-Sixty-Seconds recaps is A+.

Really?

“If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us,’ if they don’t see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it’s gonna be harder and that’s why I think it’s so important that people focus on voting on November 2.”

Anyone care to defend?

My book club has made its picks for 2010-11

Lots of great books:

Nov. 22: My Antonia, Willa Cather
Jan. 3: Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson
Jan. 31: Madame Bovary, Flaubert
Feb 28: Little Bee, Chris Cleeve
Mar 28: A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
Apr 25: Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
May 23: The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky
June 27: Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood
July 25: Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
Aug 22: The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett
Sept 26: I'm Not Scared, Niccolo Ammaniti

Douchember! Right after Movember!

Wait.  Never mind.

Get ready for Movember!

Do you know about Movember?

The Mo, slang for moustache, and November come together each year for Movember.

Movember challenges men to change their appearance and the face of men’s health by growing a moustache. The rules are simple, start Movember 1st clean-shaven and then grow a moustache for the entire month. The moustache becomes the ribbon for men’s health, the means by which awareness and funds are raised for cancers that affect men. Much like the commitment to run or walk for charity, the men of Movember commit to growing a moustache for 30 days.

The idea for Movember was sparked in 2003 over a few beers in Melbourne, Australia. The plan was simple – to bring the moustache back as a bit of a joke and do something for men’s health. No money was raised in 2003, but the guys behind the Mo realized the potential a moustache had in generating conversations about men’s health. Inspired by the women around them and all they had done for breast cancer, the Mo Bros set themselves on a course to create a global men’s health movement.

In 2004 the campaign evolved and focused on raising awareness and funds for the number one cancer affecting men – prostate cancer. 432 Mo Bros joined the movement that year, raising $55,000 for the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia - representing the single largest donation they had ever received.

The Movember moustache has continued to grow year after year, expanding to the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, Spain, South Africa, the Netherlands and Finland.

In 2009, global participation of Mo Bros and Mo Sistas climbed to 255,755, with over one million donors raising $42 Million US equivalent dollars for Movember’s global beneficiary partners.

You'll want a T-shirt for Movember. K has designed some that you can get through zazzle. Zazzle keeps 81%, but K will donate the other 19% to the Prostate Cancer Foundation. The main purpose of the shirts, though, is to generate discussion, raise awareness and encourage people to donate.


Make personalized gifts at Zazzle.

Reading list with Scooter's info added

The Scarlet Letter

Just kidding, not quite done yet.

Manhunt

My knowledge of history is best defined by its enormous gaps; the assassination of Lincoln, the conspiracy, and the aftermath is one of those gaps.  Early on I thought that for an academic and non-writer that Swanson was, yes, fabulous, but revised my opinion as the book progressed.  Still, fascinating stuff.

Our Kind of Traitor

Fabulous.

Nemesis

Fabulous.

American Assassin - How Rapp Became Rapp

It's a prequel.  I'm not the biggest Mitch Rapp fan, but this is fabulous.

Juan and NPR

I've been thinking for a long time that Juan Williams had ceased to contribute anything of value to NPR, so I'm not sorry to see him go. He never seemed to be fully prepared and kept offering ill-supported conclusions. But, as Ezra describes so well, NPR erred in the way they let him go.

I always appreciate help getting perspective on huge piles of money

This NYTimes story highlights the disingenuousness of Republicans claiming to be the party of fiscal responsibility by putting recent Republican policy choices in perspective. For example:

Calculations by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and other independent fiscal experts show that the $1.1 trillion cost over the next 10 years of the Medicare prescription drug program, which the Republican-controlled Congress adopted in 2003, by itself would add more to the deficit than the combined costs of the bailout, the stimulus and the health care law.

Technology is amazing; creative people are amazing.

 "In October of 2010, New York's Atomic Tom had their instruments stolen.  Fortunately...they know how to improvise."

Russell and John

Interesting article that made me go, "Wow, I had no idea."

Adam in Malaysia

HuffPo ran a story (I think it's the AP story) about Adam's decision to perform in Malaysia sans stage kiss, rather than cancel his show there.  I was shocked at the comments that the story generated.  I suppose it's just a handful of hateful bigoted people, but to see it in writing, at HuffPo no less, was disheartening.

And of course, some loser made the predictable "I'm sure he'd love going to prison" comment, but HuffPo deleted that one.  You know how I love him, so it breaks my heart to see people be so hateful to him.  I can't imagine what it's like for parents to see their child bullied or be the object of hate.

In a press conference in Malaysia yesterday, Adam noted the hate that he sees in the comments section of news stories about him:
"[I]f you go down into the comments section, there's a lot of hate.  But you know what? If I focused on the hate and let it affect me, I'd be letting that hate win and I refuse to do that.  I'm going to focus on the positive, focus on the love, and ignore all the hate."

Here's the press conference, in which he could not be more charming:


His Malaysia show was finished a couple hours ago.  He blew the audience a kiss in "Fever" instead of kissing Tommy.  All reports are that his vocals were insane (as judged by people who've seen video of every song in every concert this summer).  Over 16,000 Malaysian fans attended and showed him love.

Update 2:20 pm  Perfect commentary from peacevehicle via Twitter

Adam singing Fever in Manila

In follow-up, here's a video of Adam singing Fever in Manila last night. This is my favorite song on the FYE album. It's the only song on the album that includes a male pronoun; rumor has it that that is enough to scare US radio stations from playing it. It's currently topping or climbing charts in New Zealand and Singapore, though. It's during the tour performance of this song that Adam kisses Tommy and I offer it for context. And beauty. And fun!

This video (like most that I've posted here) is taken by Suz526. You can tell she's quite experienced at videotaping this song since she gets the close-up of the kiss, but then moves to the wider shot by the time the dancing begins.

Islam vs. Adam (with bonus bullet casings)

I've found a story relevant to both Michael's and my blogging interests: Muslims behaving badly (Michael) and Adam (me).

Malaysia's Islamist opposition party on Monday demanded that authorities cancel a planned [October 14] concert by U.S. glam rocker Adam Lambert that they say is promoting "gay culture" in the mainly Muslim country.

"Adam Lambert's shows... are outrageous, with lewd dancing and a gay performance that includes kissing male dancers, this is not good for people in our country," said PAS Youth leader Nasrudin Hasan. Homosexual sex is a criminal offence in Malaysia.

Pretty much every night, Adam kisses Tommy Joe Ratliff (not a dancer, but the bass player) on stage, much to the screaming delight of fans. The nightly kiss is a much-celebrated bit of stagecraft. I suppose it "promotes gay culture" but it probably does more to spur the market for homoerotica.

Apparently, Adam's concert in Kuala Lumpur will go on as planned, though he's required to "dress appropriately and not remove his clothes". He never removes his clothes, unfortunately, so he should be safe. (Some contract drafter in Malaysia is going to lose his/her job for forgetting to get Adam's promise not to pantomime ~pleasuring Tommy's bass.)

Finally, for gun lovers: one of Adam's dancers had some trouble clearing security at an airport (not sure if it was in Manila or Hong Kong) a few hours ago because his outfit or accessories included bullet casings.

Update moments later: Taylor's bracelet made the news. Surprising how many airports that bracelet has made it through without problems.

Update 10:30 am: Adam's story mentioned on NYTimes Arts Beat blog.

Update 3:16 pm: Adam tweets

Update 3:24 pm:  And then Adam tweeted some more:

Update 3:33 pm:  And some more.  (Adam, maybe a column in the NYT would be more efficient.)

Update 4:14 pm:  And then Adam's dad, Eber Lambert, tweeted.

Update 10/12/10, 6:16 pm: PRI's The World covers it, with audio from Adam.

Update 10/13/10, 10:17 pm:  Adam tweets before the Malaysia show:

Because it just gets better every time he sings it...

Adam singing Sleepwalker, from Manilla last night (preceded as always by the fab dancers on tour: Terrance Spencer, Taylor Green, Sasha Mallory and Brooke Wendle):


Update: 10/12/10:  And in Hong Kong last night.

I know how Michael enjoys metaphors from the card table

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones offers a critique of Mankiw's assessment of how proposed income tax changes (letting Bush's deficit-enhancing tax cuts expire on high-end incomes) would affect him:

Do you see the card he palmed? Basically, the effect of letting the Bush cuts expire is so tiny that the only way to make it noticeable is to compound it over 30 years, which reduces his eventual payout from $2,000 to $1,700.

Litmus test

Here's Chuck Blow in today's NYT:

Many crimes could have been prevented if the offenders had had the benefit of a competent educational system and a more expansive, better-financed social service system. Sure, some criminals are just bad people, but more are people who took a wrong turn, got lost and ended up on the wrong path. Those we can save.

This is the kind of sentiment that, upon reading it, causes you to 1) nod your head, sigh, and take another bite of your muffin, or 2) spit out your coffee and set your you hair on fire.

Or not.  

I called him Chuck like I'm familiar with him but I'm not; should I be?

Rush called Obama a Jackass

the other day.  I didn't hear it when he said it, but I did hear it the next day when he rected to some criticism.. He made a mistake in my view by comparing it to the time that Obama called the rapper ___   a  jackass.

I hated it when critcs called Bush names, and so did Rush.

Updated title: Some thugs did this

Precluding gay people from marrying ostracizes them and sends a message from the society as a whole that we all believe gay people are less than, thereby emboldening horrendous attacks like this: Update: I'm agreeing with Michael's point from his first Comment and striking this.

There were nine attackers, ranging from 16 to 23 years old and calling themselves the Latin King Goonies, the police said. Before setting upon their 30-year-old victim, they had snatched up two teenage boys whom they beat, the police said, until the boys — one of whom was sodomized with a plunger — admitted to having had sex with the man.

The attackers forced the man to strip to his underwear and tied him to a chair, the police said. One of the teenage victims was still there, and the “Goonies” ordered him to attack the man. The teenager hit him in the face and burned him with a cigarette on his nipple and penis as the others jeered and shouted gay slurs, the police said. Then the attackers whipped the man with a chain and sodomized him with a small baseball bat.

The beatings and robberies went on for hours.

NYTimes story here.

Update: BUT, I hold to this proposition, which is a reason to allow gay people to get married: there will be more bullying of gay people in a society that doesn't sanction gay marriage than in a society that does allow gay marriage. There is a correlation, I believe.

VDH teaches Anatomy

Here

Copyright question

Google links millions(?) of images.  Why I can't do the same?  In the Secretariat post, if I had posted an image of Secretariat I found on Google, and linked the image to its source, I've done the same thing Google does.  They're not getting sued for copyright violations, are they?

Secretariat's Secret

Secretariat had a secret that I'm inferring was not discovered until an autopsy:

WHY SECRETARIAT WAS SO FAST

First, he was a son of Bold Ruler, who fathered many thoroughbreds who were lightning on dirt.

But Secretariat also had something in common with the cheetah, whose heart and lung capacities help make him earth's fastest animal. Secretariat's heart weighed 22 pounds, or 2.5 times the average weight of a horse's heart.

The Roots of Obama's Rage - Fascinating

Picked up yesterday.  Fascinating. 

Simple and stunning all at the same time.

Here's Adam singing an acoustic version of Broken Open in Osaka, JP, last night:

D'Souza speaks

D'Souza tells Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview that Gibbs' attack "was a red herring, because my article and the book have nothing to do with where Obama was born. It has to do with the ideology that he got, he adopted, from his father. So the birther issue is completely irrelevant."

Terror Threats and Alerts in France

Because I've always been a francophile and because STRATFOR lets me (link is here):

Terror Threats and Alerts in France is republished with permission of STRATFOR.

By Scott Stewart

The Eiffel Tower was evacuated Sept. 28 after an anonymous bomb threat against the symbolic Parisian tourist attraction was phoned in; no explosive device was found. The day before the Eiffel Tower threat, French authorities closed the Gare Saint-Lazare in central Paris after an abandoned package, later determined innocuous, was spotted in the train station.

These two incidents serve as the latest reminders of the current apprehension in France that a terrorist attack is imminent. This concern was expressed in a very public way Sept. 11, when Bernard Squarcini, the head of France’s Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence (known by its French acronym, DCRI), told French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche that the risk of an attack in France has never been higher. Never is a long time, and France has long faced terrorist threats, making this statement quite remarkable.

Squarcini has noted in recent interviews that the combination of France’s history as a colonial power, its military involvement in Afghanistan and the impending French ban on veils that cover the full face and body (niqabs and burqas) combined to influence this threat environment.

A Month of Threats

After the French Senate approved the burqa ban Sept. 14 — which will go into effect next March — a bomb threat against the Eiffel Tower was called in that evening, causing French authorities to evacuate the site and sweep it for explosive devices.

On Sept. 16, five French citizens were abducted from the Nigerien uranium-mining town of Arlit in an operation later claimed by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a claim French Defense Minister Herve Morin later assessed as valid. In July, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon declared that France was at war with the North African al Qaeda franchise after the group killed a French hostage it had kidnapped in April. Fillon’s announcement came three days after the end of a four-day French-Mauritanian offensive against AQIM militants that resulted in the deaths of several militants. After the offensive, AQIM branded French President Nicolas Sarkozy an enemy of Allah and warned France that it would not rest until it had avenged the deaths of its fighters.

French officials have also received unsubstantiated reports from foreign liaison services of plans for suicide bombings in Paris. National Police Chief Frederic Pechenard told Europe 1 radio Sept. 22 that in addition to the threatening statements from AQIM, the French have received specific information that the group is working to target France.

On Sept. 6, Der Spiegel reported that authorities were investigating reports provided by the United States that a German-born Islamist extremist arrested in Afghanistan has warned of possible terrorist attacks in Germany and elsewhere in Europe — including France — planned by jihadists based in Pakistan. This story hit the English-language media Sept. 28, and included reports that the threat may have involved plans to launch Mumbai-like armed assaults in multiple targets in Europe.

In the words of Squarcini to the press, these combined incidents mean “all the blinkers are on red.” This statement is strikingly similar to one in the 9/11 Commission Report attributed to then-CIA Director George Tenet, who said that in July 2001 “the system was blinking red.”
While an examination of the current threat situation in France is interesting, it is equally interesting to observe the way that the French are handling their threat warnings in the media.
The Threat Environment in France

While its neighbors such as Spain and the United Kingdom have suffered bloody attacks since 9/11, the French so far apparently have been spared — although there are some who suspect the yet-unsolved June 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447 may have resulted from foul play, along with the explosion at the AZF fertilizer plant in September 2001.

France has long been squarely in the crosshairs of jihadist groups such as AQIM. This is due not only to its former colonial involvement in North Africa but also to its continued support of governments in countries like Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia deemed un-Islamic by jihadists. It is also due to France’s military commitment in Afghanistan. Moreover, on the domestic side, France has a significant Muslim minority largely segregated in slums known in French as “banlieues” outside France’s major cities. A significant proportion of the young Muslim men who live in these areas are unemployed and disaffected. This disaffection has been displayed periodically in the form of large-scale riots such as those in October 2005 and November 2007, both of which resulted in massive property destruction and produced the worst civil unrest in France since the late 1960s. While not all those involved in the riots were Muslims, Muslims did play a significant and visible role in them.

Moves by the French government such as the burqa ban have stoked these tensions and feelings of anger and alienation. The ban, like the 2004 ban against headscarves in French schools, angered not only jihadists but also some mainstream Muslims in France and beyond.

Still, other than a minor bombing outside the the Indonesian Embassy in Paris in October 2004, France has seemingly been spared the type of attacks seen in Madrid in March 2004 and London in July 2005. And this is in spite of the fact that France has had to deal with Islamist militants for far longer than its neighbors. Algerian Islamist militants staged a series of attacks involving gas canisters filled with nails and bolts on the Paris subway system in 1995 and 1996, and during the 1980s France experienced a rash of terrorist attacks. In 1981 and 1982, a group known as the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Faction attacked a series of diplomatic and military targets in several French cities. Algerian militants also hijacked an Air France flight in December 1994, a situation resolved when personnel from the French Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN) stormed the aircraft in Marseilles and killed all four hijackers.

“Shoe Bomber” Richard Reid, who is serving a life sentence in the United States for trying to blow up a Paris-to-Miami flight with an explosives-stuffed shoe in December 2001, staged his attack out of France.

In 2001, French authorities broke up a French-Algerian terrorist cell planning to attack the U.S. Embassy in Paris. The six militants, some of whom French authorities had linked to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, were convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

Also in 2001, Algerian extremists were convicted in connection with an aborted plot to attack a Christmas market at Strasbourg Cathedral on New Year’s Eve 2000.

In January 2005, French police arrested a cell of alleged Chechen and Algerian militants, charging members with plotting terrorist attacks in Western Europe. According to French authorities, the group planned attacks against government and Jewish targets in the United Kingdom as well as against Russian diplomatic and business targets in Western and Central Europe. Other targets included tourist attractions and crowds in the United Kingdom and France and French train stations.

More recently, in October 2009, French particle physicist Adlene Hicheur and his brother, Halim, who holds a Ph.D. in physiology and biomechanics, were arrested and charged with helping AQIM plan terrorist attacks in France.

In the final analysis, France is clearly overdue for a successful jihadist attack, and has been overdue for several years now. Perhaps the only thing that has spared the country has been a combination of proactive, skillful police and intelligence work — the kind that resulted in the thwarted attempts discussed above — and a little bit of luck.

Alerts

France has a national security alert system called the Vigipirate, which has four levels:

· Yellow, which means there is an uncertain threat.

· Orange, which signifies there is a plausible threat.

· Red, which signals a highly probable threat.

· Scarlet, which indicates a certain or known threat.

The Vigipirate level has been set at red since the aftermath of the July 2005 London bombings. This level is probably justified given that France is overdue for an attack, and French authorities undoubtedly have been busy investigating a large number of potential threats since the decision was made to raise the level to red. Still, as we have long discussed, this type of warning system has a tendency to get some attention when the levels are initially raised, but after five years of living at level red, French citizens are undoubtedly experiencing some degree of alert fatigue — and this is why Squarcini’s recent statements are so interesting. Apparently, he does not have the type of hard intelligence required to raise the threat level to scarlet — or perhaps the French government does not want to run the political risk of the backlash to the restrictive security measures they would have to institute if they raised the level. Such measures could include dramatically increasing security personnel and checkpoints and closing certain metro stops, train stations and airports, all things that could be incredibly disruptive.

Generally speaking, a figure like Squarcini would not provide the type of warnings he has recently shared in the press if his service had a firm grasp on the suspects behind the plot(s) about which he is concerned. For example, the FBI felt it had good coverage of groups plotting attacks in some of the recent thwarted plots in the United States, including the group arrested in May 2009 and charged with plotting to bomb two Jewish targets in the Bronx and shoot down a military aircraft at an Air National Guard base. In such a case, the director of the FBI did not feel the need to alert the public to the threat; he believed his agents had everything under control. Therefore, that Squarcini is providing this warning indicates his service does not have a handle on the threat or threats.

Information about a pending threat is not released to the public lightly, because such information could well compromise the source of the intelligence and endanger the investigation into the people behind the plot. This would only be done in situations where one has little or no control over the potential threat. There are numerous factors that would influence the decision to release such information.

Perhaps one of the first is that in a democracy, where public officials and their parties can be held responsible for failure to prevent an attack — as the Aznar government in Spain was following the Madrid train bombings — information pertaining to pending threats may also be released to protect governments from future liability. Following every major attack in a democratic nation, there is always an investigation that seeks to determine who knew what about the threat and when. Making threat information public can spare politicians from falling victim to a witch hunt.

Alternatively, some suggest that French authorities are being pressured to make such warnings to distract the public from domestic problems and Sarkozy’s low popularity. Many also believe the French government has been using its campaign against the Roma as such a distraction. Sarkozy, widely perceived as law-and-order oriented and tough on crime and terrorism, is indeed struggling politically. While the current warnings may provide such a beneficial distraction for Sarkozy, it is our assessment that the terrorist threat to France is very real, and is not being fabricated for political purposes.

Warnings also can be issued in an effort to pre-empt an attack. In cases in which authorities have intelligence that a plot is in the works, but insufficient information to identify the plotters or make arrests, announcing that a plot has been uncovered and security has been increased is seen as a way to discourage a planned attack. With the devolution of the jihadist threat from one based upon a central al Qaeda group to one based upon regional franchises, small cells and lone wolves, it is more difficult to gather intelligence that indicates the existence of these diverse actors, much less information pertaining to their intent and capabilities. In such a murky environment, threat information is often incomplete at best.

Whatever Squarcini’s motive, his warning should serve to shake the French public out of the alert fatigue associated with spending five years at the red level. This should cause the public (and cops on the beat) to increase their situational awareness and report suspicious behavior. The suspicious package seen at the Gare Saint-Lazare on Monday may well have been reported as a result of this increased awareness.

As the jihadist threat becomes almost as diffuse as the criminal threat, ordinary citizens who practice good situational awareness are an increasingly important national security resource — a complex network of eyeballs and brains that Squarcini may have been attempting to activate with his warning. With the burqa ban scheduled to begin next spring, French troops in Afghanistan and the ongoing conflict with AQIM, the threats are likely to continue for the near term — meaning France will remain on alert.

Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout

This was a book-club pick.  It's also a Pulitzer Prize winner.  It's a lovely novel told through short stories in which the title character appears.  Olive is at the center of some stories and barely present in others.  

Strout does a particularly stunning job of describing and reflecting on aging.  She's got a degree in gerontology and makes good use of her knowledge here, taking Olive from middle-aged to her seventies.

Olive has not been a particularly easy person to live with.  She abused her son, though she insists fiercely that she loved him.  She's gruff, prone to temper flares, and opinionated.  She's none too fond of people unless they are in dire need of love. 

The stories cover themes of finding companionship and emotional support outside of marriage while staying married, depression (treated and untreated), parenting and results thereof, the walls people build between themselves and others (sometimes by choice, sometimes made of the debris of resentments, sometimes indestructible).  This reminds me a bit of Wendell Berry, but with a darker slant.  

Archive for subtitles

Since I can't get anyone else interesting in tags, I'm confident you won't be interested in archiving subtitles either, but I'm going to give it a shot and you should feel free to help out. When you create a new subtitle, make an entry on the new page for "Subtitle Archive" (at the bottom of the column on the right), with the date you published the new subtitle. Optionally, add a link to the source.

Which candidates' parents are praying to "bring America back to her knees"?

From Joel Demos' parents:

We ask for your prayers that God will use Joel to advance HIS Kingdom and help bring America back to her knees! Joel has passed phase one of this venture with flying colors, gaining the favor and backing of key MN Republicans in a miraculous way in a very short time. Now, it is crucial that he pass through the second phase successfully, raising the large amount of money needed to launch his campaign in a very short time. Pray that the finance needed for this venture will miraculously come in from unexpected and solicited sources. Pray that the Word will be fulfilled, Matthew 10:18-20, throughout the remainder of this campaign to become Congressman Joel Demos from CD5 in Minnesota! ...
For the Kingdom and for America,
Alan and Valerie Demos

I'm not sure exactly what this means, but I'm betting that if Keith Ellison's parents publicly prayed that Allah "bring America back to her knees," Glenn Beck would be having a cow.

Here's the Matthew passage:

Matthew 10:18-20 (King James Version)

18And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles.

19But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak.

20For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.

h/t quichmoraine

Joel Demos!

Canoeing with the Cree, Eric Sevareid

I just learned of the existence of Canoeing with the Cree, a book written by Eric Sevareid that looks interesting.

In 1930 two novice paddlers--Eric Sevareid and Walter C. Port--launched a secondhand 18-foot canvas canoe into the Minnesota River at Fort Snelling for an ambitious summer-long journey from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay. Without benefit of radio, motor, or good maps, the teenagers made their way over 2,250 miles of rivers, lakes, and difficult portages. Nearly four months later, after shooting hundreds of sets of rapids and surviving exceedingly bad conditions and even worse advice, the ragged, hungry adventurers arrived in York Factory on Hudson Bay--with winter freeze-up on their heels. First published in 1935, Canoeing with the Cree is Sevareid's classic account of this youthful odyssey. The newspaper stories that Sevareid wrote on this trip launched his distinguished journalism career, which included more than a decade as a television correspondent and commentator on the CBS Evening News. Now with a new foreword by Arctic explorer, Ann Bancroft.

I can't believe I didn't know about this book and its role in Sevareid's career.

WhatThe****ShouldIMakeForDinner

Want help thinking of something to make for dinner? Try this.

Click on the food name to get to a recipe for it. Or click on "I Don't F***ing Like That" or "I Don't F***ing Eat Meat" to change the suggestion.

I'm still shopping at Target and I still support same-sex marriage

There's a boycott going on in our area against Target for its contributions to MN Forward, a group that has backed Tom Emmer, the Republican candidate for Minnesota governor. Mr. Emmer is against gay marriage.

Of course, I love the idea that these political contributions have consequences to the businesses that make them, but this boycott against Target doesn't quite make sense to me. Here's the problem: I don't think very many people who've started buying their paper towels at Cub Foods instead have investigated Cub's political donations.

Cub is owned by SuperValu, Inc. Its political action committee has donated to a lot of Democrats, but it also has supported Republican candidates who are against gay marriage. One example, Joe Linus Barton:

Maybe the scale of Supervalu's donations (via a PAC) is small enough, compared to Target's contribution to MN Forward, that it's a different animal, but I daresay that lots of boycotters haven't considered whether their alternative paper-towel source is really better.

And, by the way, has anyone checked on political contributions of the manufacturer of those paper towels (and everything else)?

This is pretty simple

I have a few more thoughts about the D'Souza piece. It's not that I merely disagree with his conclusions, it's that I can clearly see that he's carrying the party's water at the expense of intellectual integrity.

It's completely, utterly, intellectually dishonest for D'Souza to write these opening sentences, without any acknowledgment whatsoever of the epically depressed economic conditions in which Obama's policy choices have been made:

Barack Obama is the most antibusiness president in a generation, perhaps in American history. Thanks to him the era of big government is back. Obama runs up taxpayer debt not in the billions but in the trillions. He has expanded the federal government's control over home mortgages, investment banking, health care, autos and energy. The Weekly Standard summarizes Obama's approach as omnipotence at home, impotence abroad.

The President's actions are so bizarre that they mystify his critics and supporters alike.

Those actions might be bizarre if they were done in the midst of an economy perking along. D'Souza surely knows this and yet chooses to omit mention of the economic conditions.

How about this:

The rich, Obama insists, aren't paying their "fair share." This by itself seems odd...

Oh yes, so very odd. It's almost as odd as our country's 1950's tax policy. Apparently, we've had Kenyan anti-colonial, socialist policy-makers fathered by Obama's dad in our past but just weren't aware of it.  (From dshort.com here.)

D'Souza actually wrote these sentences:

Obama railed on about "America's century-long addiction to fossil fuels." What does any of this have to do with the oil spill?

Yes indeed.  What ON EARTH could be a reason someone would reflect on fossil-fuel consumption in the midst of an oil spill.  I just can't figure that out either.  It surely must have something to do with one's (completely absent) father's view of colonialism, because there just is no other explanation for such a thing.

If you don't think D'Souza is playing a dangerous game of pushing buttons to cause Rethugs to salivate, then ask yourself this: What is the point of including the dollar figure in this sentence: "He supports a $100 million mosque scheduled to be built near the site where terrorists in the name of Islam brought down the World Trade Center."

The point, of course, is to repeatedly connect Obama's name to expenditures. Nevermind that this isn't government money being spent. Doesn't matter. It's a signal to generate the desired Pavlovian response: "Obama spends my hard-earned money. There he goes, spending another $100 million, this time on Muslims."

D'Souza uses the words "odd" and "bizarre" to characterize Obama's behavior. These are word choices calculated to fit the rightwing meme that Obama is a foreigner (and of course we all know foreigners are threatening to our well-being). Seriously, why else would D'Souza call it "odd" to discuss dependence on fossil-fuel at the site of an oil spill? Why else would he use the word "bizarre" to characterize stimulus spending that was voted on by Congress (none of whom shares Obama's father)?

As The Economist put it this way in reaching the conclusion that D'Souza is deranged:

There's no need to search for abstruse reasons why an extreme movement conservative like Dinesh D'Souza might oppose raising taxes on the rich or defend privilege in access to education. And it's not surprising that a centrist liberal like Barack Obama thinks people earning more than $250,000 per year ought to be paying more taxes. In fact, that conviction is shared by a majority of the American electorate. If Mr. D'Souza finds it bizarre, it's not Mr. Obama who's out of touch with America.

Incidentally, who isn't anti-colonialist? Is there a pro-colonial movement afoot in the Conservative party?

Nothing like kindly being chastised by an atheist...

And Michael has chastised me before along the same lines:

"How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?" -- Penn Gillette

Video here.

SHAC Jam

The Boy Scouts are going to attempt a world record rocket launch on October 9 in College Station and invited the Cub Scouts to help.  Here's our pack yesterday testing some rockets. 

Charlie, I can't see a thing...

Charlie, I can't see a thing in here, where are you?  Wait.  OK.  Here, hold out your hand.  Here's your whistle.  Got it?  OK, later.

October Sky is an anagram of Rocket Boys

Scooter:  It's October Sky on P______ H______!

Michael: It's more Simpson than Hickam...

I guess I've been behind the Pine Curtain too long...

If this is my new fantasy love interest and new favorite sport's league:


Kenda Lenseigne and Cowboy Mounted Shooting Association. Videos here.

Huh.

I would not have guessed that Kanye was a fan of classic lit, but here you have it:

Blogging mystery

Why is my proof-reading proofreading more thorough and accurate after I post than it is before I post?

Update:  You'll think I misspelled proofreading for effect, but I did not.

Was going to put this as a subhead

but still can't take down "man-biz".

Mr. O'Rourke describing Scooter in the last paragraph of All the Trouble in the World:

Maybe this isn't such a hopeful moment in history. Really, it's something of a disappointment to know that when mankind--through noble struggles, grim sacrifices (and a lot of money-making)--does achieve such things as property rights, rule of law, responsible government, and universal education, the fruit borne of these splendid achievements is, um, me.

The Fourth Branch on D'Souza

If anyone is looking for a more detailed take-down of D'Souza's nonsense, try this post at The Fourth Branch. Have a few key points, but do read the whole thing:

1) D'Souza ascribes a policy choice (loans to Brazil's oil industry for off-shore drilling) to Obama, but that choice was actually made by a board that had more Repbulicans Republicans than Democrats, every one of whom had been appointed by Bush.

2) Obama's speech about the BP spill DID spend several paragraphs talking about the clean-up. Besides, since when is it Kenyan-anti-colonial to talk about the dangers of dependence on non-renewable sources of energy?

3) Bailout money is actually getting repaid. TARP was under Bush.

4) Military:

Perhaps D’Souza is unaware that Obama has escalated the war in Afghanistan since taking office and left troops in Iraq longer than he said he would as a candidate. He has also increased predator drone attacks into Pakistan and deployed troops to the US border with Mexico. Are these honestly the acts of a man driven by an impassioned hatred of the US military or who views the US military as a neocolonial force?

Adam Serwer on D'Souza

Adam Serwer on Sept. 13:

For whatever reason, elements of the right have chosen not to evaluate Barack Obama based on his actions or his policies but through the kind of postmodern literary interpretation that wouldn't make it through the vetting process of a freshman bong circle at Wesleyan. In these retellings of Obama's personal history, the president's life is an epic, Marxist, sinister version of a Joseph Campbell-style heroic journey, with its hero ultimately falling, like Anakin Skywalker, to the dark side of the force.

Emerging from his sinecure as president of a small religious college in New York, Dinesh D'Souza, who has been laundering the racism of the right through an "intellectual" filter since his days at Dartmouth, gets back to where his career began. In an essay for Forbes, he concludes that the animating philosophy of the president is "Kenyan anti-colonialism." The purpose of the essay is to synthesize the most idiotic conservative criticisms of Obama into one handy term...

[Jump]

This is birtherism with big words. This is the witchdoctor sign without Photoshop, WorldNetDaily without the exclamation points. D'Souza doesn't need to stare at Obama's birth certificate for hours to come to the same conclusion as the birthers, which is that the president is a foreigner. But neither is "Kenyan anti-colonialism" a superficial term. At once, it engages all the racialized elements of the conservative critique of Obama -- not just that having an African father means he isn't really an American but that his inner life consists of a deep anger toward white people, and the office of the presidency is merely the means to secure a collective payback. It also manages to nod in the direction of another conservative racist meme, that having a black president makes the United States somehow analogous to African Third World countries run by bloodthirsty despots.

Shariah is the fault line

We've been arguing about the wrong thing: who is moderate, who is not, who is more moderate than whom.

"Shariah is the crucial fault line of Islam's internecine struggle. On one side of the divide are Muslim reformers and authentic moderates - figures like Abdurrahman Wahid, the late president of Indonesia and leader of the world's largest liberal Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama - who embrace the Enlightenment's veneration of reason and, in particular, its separation of the spiritual and secular realms. On that side of the divide, Shariah is defined as but a reference point for a Muslim's personal conduct, not a corpus to be imposed on the life of a pluralistic society.

The other side of the divide is dominated by "Islamists," who are Muslim supremacists. Like erstwhile proponents of communism and Nazism, these supremacists - some terrorists, others employing stealthier means - seek to impose a global theocratic and authoritarian regime, called a caliphate. On this side of the divide, Shariah is a compulsory system that Muslims are obliged to wage jihad to install and to which the rest of the world is required to submit.

For these ideologues, Shariah is not a private matter. They see the West as an infidel enemy to be conquered, not a culture and civilization to be embraced or at least tolerated. It is impossible, they maintain, for alternative legal systems and forms of government like ours to coexist peacefully with the end-state they seek."

Does Rauf support or reject Shariah?

D'Souza's new book

The Roots of Obama's Rage:

"In The Roots of Obama’s Rage you’ll learn: Why Obama’s economic policies are actually designed to make America poorer compared to the rest of the world; Why Obama will welcome a nuclear Iran; Why Obama sees America as a rogue nation—worse than North Korea; The real reason Obama banished a bust of Winston Churchill from the White House and ordered NASA to praise the scientific contributions of Muslims; Why Obama would like to make America’s superpower status a thing of the past.

Stunning, provocative, original, and telling—no one has better diagnosed who Obama is, what he intends to do, and why he poses an existential threat to America than Dinesh D’Souza in The Roots of Obama’s Rage."

October 4!

D'Souza: "How Obama Thinks"

I would advise Steph to duct tape her head before reading the whole thing.

"But instead of readying us for the challenge, our President is trapped in his father's time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son."

Stewart on Imam Rauf's "threat"

Stewart was in fine form last night.  In this segment, Jon highlights the response of the right-wing media to Imam Rauf's purported threat.  Stewart's take jives jibes with mine.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Islamophobiapalooza
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Giddy for public domain poetry: Kipling

One of my dad's favorite Kipling poems.

The Female of the Species (1911)

When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the other's tale --
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man, a bear in most relations-worm and savage otherwise, --
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger --- Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue -- to the scandal of The Sex!

But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity -- must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions -- not in these her honour dwells.
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions -- in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies! --
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

Unprovoked and awful charges -- even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons -- even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish -- like the Jesuit with the squaw!

So it cames that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice -- which no woman understands.

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern -- shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

Check list for my dad's reading list

Here's a table to keep track of Michael's progress on the list. (Scooter and LJ, if you want in on this, just let me know.)

Uncle Johnny's reading list - part 1, Poe

See here for background.

What's not included in the comments is an off-line discussion with Steph in which I marveled at the breadth of Johnny's list and lamented my own illiteracy. That led to Steph's comment that the list could be read in six months and my comment that I was going to give it a try.

I have given various reading lists a go before, with little success, so we'll see.

In the comments to Steph's post I said I was going to start in chronological order (Hawthorne, Three Musketeers, Poe, Tom Sawyer and Prince and Pauper, and Treasure Island).

[All of the background/history noted below comes from my extensive research on Wikipedia or from the introductions to the Poe collection or The Scarlett Letter. The links below take you to the Wikipedia articles.]

Hawthorne and Poe were contemporaries (Poe even reviewed one of Hawthorne's short story collections). Poe died in 1849. Many of Hawthorne's better known short stories were published before then; however, The Scarlett Letter, which I'm reading now, was published in 1850. The Three Musketeers was published in 1844.

I found a Poe short story collection in my bookcase and so started with it. So the initial order will be Poe, Hawthorne, Musketeers, which is close enough to chronological.

Johnny's list called for four Edgar Allan Poe short stories.

I read The Black Cat, The Cask of Amontillado, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Gold Bug, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Roget, and The Purloined Letter. I started The Fall of the House of Usher, but could not get past the convoluted sentence structure and overwhelming dreariness. How about a little sample?

I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth--in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be restated--an influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit--an effect which the physique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the morale of his existence.

[I'm not going to attempt to summarize the stories or critique them; the Wiki people can do that better than I.]

The first three in the list are very short "horror" stories with a twist at the end. The Gold Bug is one of the earliest "detective" stories and reflects the popularity of cryptology at the time.

The last three in the list star the first private detective in fiction, C. Auguste Dupin.

Wikipedia:

"As the first true detective in fiction, the Dupin character established many literary devices which would be used in future fictional detectives including Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Many later characters, for example, follow Poe's model of the brilliant detective, his personal friend who serves as narrator, and the final revelation being presented before the reasoning that leads up to it."

Add to those factors the bumbling city cop who relies on the detective for help and you see that Conan Doyle had the structure laid out for him by Poe.

All of Poe can be found on Gutenberg for reasons our copyright attorney can explain.

My general thoughts on reading Poe to follow.

Bated breath

World Wide Words says:

Q: From Steve Gearhart: Where does the term baited breath come from, as in: ‘I am waiting with baited breath for your answer’?
A: The correct spelling is actually bated breath but it’s so common these days to see it written as baited breath that there’s every chance that it will soon become the usual form, to the disgust of conservative speakers and the confusion of dictionary writers.
[Jump]
It’s easy to mock, but there’s a real problem here. Bated and baited sound the same and we no longer use bated (let alone the verb to bate), outside this one set phrase, which has become an idiom. Confusion is almost inevitable. Bated here is a contraction of abated through loss of the unstressed first vowel (a process called aphesis); it means “reduced, lessened, lowered in force”. So bated breath refers to a state in which you almost stop breathing as a result of some strong emotion, such as terror or awe.

Annabel Lee

While we're waiting with baited bated breath for Michael to post something about his recent Poe readings, have a little Poe poetry.  This is Annabelle Annabel Lee in its entirety.  (Yay for expiration of copyright.)

Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,
          In a kingdom by the sea,
    That a maiden there lived whom you may know
          By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
    And this maiden she lived with no other thought
          Than to love and be loved by me.

    I was a child and she was a child,
          In this kingdom by the sea;
    But we loved with a love that was more than love-
          I and my Annabel Lee;
    With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
          Coveted her and me.

    And this was the reason that, long ago,
          In this kingdom by the sea,
    A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
          My beautiful Annabel Lee;
    So that her highborn kinsman came
          And bore her away from me,
    To shut her up in a sepulchre
          In this kingdom by the sea.

    The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
          Went envying her and me-
    Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
          In this kingdom by the sea)
    That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
          Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

    But our love it was stronger by far than the love
          Of those who were older than we-
          Of many far wiser than we-
    And neither the angels in heaven above,
          Nor the demons down under the sea,
    Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
          Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

    For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
          Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
    And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
          Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
    And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
    Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
          In the sepulchre there by the sea,
          In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Imam Rauf on Larry King

I'm days late with this, but I just saw the rerun of Imam Rauf on Larry King last night.  I'd missed the original.

Imam Rauf was "interviewed" by Soledad O'Brien.  Those inclined to be hateful of him are willfully misunderstanding his words and twisting his meaning.  Soledad asked an annoying number of times: "Why build at this location when 71% of the American population is against putting the center at that location?"  He answered the question patiently over and over.  One of the many points he made was that he held concerns that if he aborted the mosque/community center project or moved it in response to protests, that it would be fuel for terrorism, that worldwide headlines that the project was disallowed by the American people would fuel anti-West sentiments and spur violent responses.  At one point he described that he feared there was greater danger from violent acts from radical Muslims than from the radical right.   It was an assessment that you would think the right would embrace:  he just characterized radical Muslims as more violent than radical Christians.  Isn't that what right-wing blogs shout every day? But no, the radical right has construed his comment as a threat.  It wasn't a threat. (Media Matter points out that Gen. Petraeus has said something similar.)

I want to give Imam Rauf credit for not losing his temper with Soledad.  Good grief.  She could not have been more hostile.  Kudos to him for pointing out that calling this location, blocks from Ground Zero, "sacred ground" when there's a strip club in the block is "inconsistent".

He also acknowledged that Hamas is responsible for terrorist acts and that he condemns all acts of terrorism.  I know, I know; he refused to say the sentence "I condemn Hamas" so his statement will be insufficient to prove to some that he's not...whatever horrible thing you think he is.  Knock yourself out with that, as long as you are also suspicious of people who say they condemn the child abuse committed by Catholic priests without being willing to say "I condemn the Catholic Church."

Meanwhile, Media Matters has prepared a timeline of the news stories about the Cordoba house.  It's instructive is you are wondering how to whip the public into a frenzy over something they weren't initially inclined to be opposed to.  It has, by the way, very little to do with uncovering new facts and much more to do with shading and characterizing the facts and playing Six Degrees of People Who Don't Eat Bacon.

Squirrel revenge

As K was walking through our back yard yesterday, an object fell out of a tree.  He looked into the tree and saw that a squirrel had dropped it.  K examined the object and identified it as one of Karma's bones.  That's right.  A squirrel stole Karma's bone and dragged it into the tree.

Since squirrels are vegetarians, I can only figure that the squirrel stole the bone to get back at Karma for killing its friends/relatives in the backyard.  She has caught and killed three squirrels in the back yard, and another two at the dog park, that I know of.

Winnie has a baby dragon

Welcome to the world, Draco Verta.

50 Cent

If you're not following 50 Cent on Twitter, you're missing out on a lot of amused-head-shaking.  I was going to offer some excerpts, but they're too full of banned words to show here.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Chabon

Oy. I finally finished YPU.

I'm sure it's great; I just had a very hard time getting through it. No doubt that's more of a comment on my mental state than on the novel. Because I wasn't reading as attentively as I ought to have been, I didn't remember the characters that show up again in the last quarter of the novel and are crucial to the religious-political aspects of the plot.

I loved the what-if premise of a Jewish settlement established post WWII in Alaska.  I loved the genre-bending; it' a noir murder mystery, historical sci-fi and a love story rolled into one. I appreciated the cynical take on how the expectation of a messiah can be used and exploited, by those trying to make a buck and by governments.  There was way too much convenient coincidence to suit me, although that's maybe a nod to its noir platform.

Trivia: I noticed that Chabon gives Nabokov (Speak, Memory) a h/t for devising the Zugzwang (the condition of having no good moves) of Mendel Shpilman.

Spoilers behind the cut.

Questions for Imam Rauf From an American Muslim

[Dr. M. Zudhi Jasser, a medical doctor and a former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander, is the founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy based in Phoenix, Ariz.]

After a long absence while controversy over the mosque near Ground Zero smoldered, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf finally held forth this week both in the New York Times and on CNN.

Imam Rauf and his supporters are clearly more interested in making a political statement in relation to Islam than in the mosque's potential for causing community division and pain to those who lost loved ones on 9/11. That division is already bitterly obvious.

As someone who has been involved in building mosques around the country, and who has dealt with his fair share of unjustified opposition, I ask of Imam Rauf and all his supporters, "Where is your sense of fairness and common decency?" In relation to Ground Zero, I am an American first, a Muslim second, just as I would be at Concord, Gettysburg, Normandy Beach, Pearl Harbor or any other battlefield where my fellow countrymen lost their lives.

I must ask Imam Rauf: For what do you stand—what's best for Americans overall, or for what you think is best for Islam? What have you said and argued to Muslim-majority nations to address their need for reform? You have said that Islam does not need reform, despite the stoning of women in Muslim countries, death sentences for apostates, and oppression of reformist Muslims and non-Muslims.

You now lecture Americans that WTC mosque protests are "politically motivated" and "go against the American principle of church and state." Yet you ignore the wide global prevalence of far more dangerous theo-political groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and all of its violent and nonviolent offshoots.

In your book, "What's Right With Islam," you cite the Brotherhood's radical longtime spiritual leader Imam Yusuf Qaradawi as a "moderate." Reformist American Muslims are not afraid to name Mr. Qaradawi and his ilk as radical. We Muslims should first separate mosque and state before lecturing Americans about church and state.

Imam, tell me if you can look into the eyes of children who lost a parent on 9/11 and convince them that this immodest Islamic center benefits them. How will it in any way aid counterterrorism efforts or keep one American any safer? You willfully ignore what American Muslims most need—an open call for reformation that unravels the bigoted and shoddy framework of political Islam and separates mosque and state.

There are certainly those who are prejudiced against Muslims and who are against mosques being built anywhere, and even a few who wish to burn the Quran. But most voices in this case have been very clear that for every American freedom of religion is a right, but that it is not right to make one's religion a global political statement with a towering Islamic edifice that casts a shadow over the memorials of Ground Zero.

As an American Muslim, I look at that pit of devastation and contemplate the thousands of lives undone there within seconds. I pray for the ongoing strength to fight the fanatics who did this, and who continue their war against my country with both overt violence and covert strategies that aim to undo the very freedoms for which so many have fought and died.

Imam Rauf may not appear to the untrained eye to be an Islamist, but by making Ground Zero an Islamic rather than an American issue, and by failing to firmly condemn terrorist groups like Hamas, he shows his true allegiance.

Islamists in "moderate" disguise are still Islamists. In their own more subtle ways, the WTC mosque organizers end up serving the same aims of the separatist and supremacist wings of political Islam. In this epic struggle of the 21st century, we cannot afford to ignore the continuum between nonviolent political Islam and the militancy it ultimately fuels among the jihadists.

Silence

Let me just note that neither of the Christians writing here have used this public space to condemn the Koran-burning event. Should I infer that you approve of the event? And if not, then may we please put an end to giving any credence to new reports or analysis that draw conclusions about Muslim "support" for violent criminals simply because they haven't uttered their condemnation to a reporter whose publication wanted to print it?

Heroes: Susan Retik and Patti Quigley

In the midst of all the hatred and vitriol and Islamophobia and Koran-burning, my faith that humans can behave humanely was restored by Susan Retik and Patti Quigley, whose husbands died in the 9/11 attack.

So at a time when the American government reacted to the horror of 9/11 mostly with missiles and bombs, detentions and waterboardings, Ms. Retik and Ms. Quigley turned to education and poverty-alleviation projects — in the very country that had incubated a plot that had pulverized their lives.

The organization they started, Beyond the 11th, has now assisted more than 1,000 Afghan widows in starting tiny businesses. It’s an effort both to help some of the world’s neediest people and to fight back at the distrust, hatred and unemployment that sustain the Taliban.

Kristof tells their story here.

Bolton in 2012?

Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower...

was apparently made into some kind of documentary. Did anybody see it on HBO this week? I think it was called My Trip to Al-Qaeda.

Bobcat spotted in Pearland

Home of the Little League Champs [of the the contiguous 48] and just across the freeway from us.

Re: More perceived threats

Another thing that gets the shorts of some of us on the right side of things all in a bunch is the dread EMP. Here's the [link to the] recent report of STRATFOR on the subject by Scott Stewart and Nate Huges.

[Hmmm, for some reason I'm unable to paste the article even though I'm allowed to reprint. Guess anyone who's interested will just have to go read the thing at their site so I'll double check the link.]

My only minor gripe with the article is that I'm not certain the US would or should treat (in terms of retaliation) an EMP attack as a conventional nukular attack.

Bottom line is that an EMP threat is pretty darned remote.

Threats, real and perceived

Because so much of public policy is driven by fear, it's important to have an accurate understanding of the likelihood of harm from perceived threats.

NPR's blog offers a reality check about threats to kids.

Based on surveys Barnes collected, the top five worries of parents are, in order:

1. Kidnapping
2. School snipers
3. Terrorists
4. Dangerous strangers
5. Drugs

But how do children really get hurt or killed?

1. Car accidents
2. Homicide (usually committed by a person who knows the child, not a stranger)
3. Abuse
4. Suicide
5. Drowning

Parents are busy worrying about all the wrong things.  It matters to all of us because parents who are worried about their children being killed by terrorists will vote in line with candidates who reflect that fear and make promises to keep them safe from terrorists, an unlikely threat.  Meanwhile, a candidate who advocates for greater spending on mental health professionals to guard against suicides, a more likely threat, will be dismissed.

(Warning: NPR's post contains not-fully explained statistics.  The threat of death for everyone is 100%.  Period.  I think the writer means "the threat of death before the age of 18..." or something like that.)

H/t Supraluxe.