Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Bush is a War Criminal
I don't know why it took this article for me to see the truth. I have been hearing the news for the last several weeks and I don't know why I couldn't connect the dots.
Facts:
1). Torture is a war crime under both US law and the Geneva Convention.
2). Waterboarding is torture.
3). The Bush Administration has been purported to use waterboarding in several instances.
Ergo, the Bush administration has committed a war crime. I think that qualifies as "high crimes and misdemeanors" that is the requirement for impeachment.
Now, all the evidence of a particular war crime has been destroyed. Hmmm.....
On this most special day in our culture, one has to wonder what Jesus would think of waterboarding. Would he call it torture?
Merry Christmas.
Facts:
1). Torture is a war crime under both US law and the Geneva Convention.
2). Waterboarding is torture.
3). The Bush Administration has been purported to use waterboarding in several instances.
Ergo, the Bush administration has committed a war crime. I think that qualifies as "high crimes and misdemeanors" that is the requirement for impeachment.
Now, all the evidence of a particular war crime has been destroyed. Hmmm.....
On this most special day in our culture, one has to wonder what Jesus would think of waterboarding. Would he call it torture?
Merry Christmas.
Friday, December 07, 2007
It's time
Senate Rejects Energy Bill
I think the vast majority of the American people can think enough in geopolical terms to realize that it is time to wean ourselves off this addiction to oil. Hell, the President said it himself in his State of Union address last year. Everyone now realizes that the safe money is not on oil. There are a number of imminently logical reasons for this:
1). Oil will become perpetually more expensive.
Since we are effectively burning the last billion or so years of organic carbon that has existed on this planet, we are eventually going to run out of oil. This fact is indisputable as the fact that the sun is going to explode in 9 billion years or so. We have absolutely no idea when we are going to run out of oil, but I'm guessing that it will be sometime in the next hundred years. And, as the resource gets more and more rare, it will get more expensive. Supply and demand. Wouldn't it be nice to run our economy on a resource that is only gets cheaper as we figure out newer, cleverer ways to produce it. Imagine America as an energy exporter!
2). We hate the people who have the vast majority of the oil.
Don't deny it....Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Venezuela, Russia. These countries just suck and their shitty govenments are only in our sphere of thought because they receive copious amounts of money from the US, Europe, and China. Let's invent something else and send them all back to the stone age where they should be. Unless you think that women being sentenced to death by stoning for admitting to being raped is an example of an "enlightened country." You want a war on terrorism. Let's make them so poor they won't be able to afford to buy a can of beans let alone a bomb.
3). Global Warming
Even if you don't buy the science, you have to admit to yourself that we can't keep dumping carbon into the atmosphere forever. Eventually we are going to have some kind of global impact. Might be ten years or a thousand but we'll eventually have an impact.
I actually can't think of any good arguments to use oil other than the fact that it is the cheapest thing going right now. Chemically, it's a very good carrier of energy. It is very stable and can form all kinds of cool polymers that we use a lot, but there are other ways to form those compounds and there are better carriers of energy than oil. It's the cheapest and easiest thing right now, but we all know that is going to change someday. We're being penny wise and pound foolish and that's not good business. It's time to change and the only way to do that is with government policies that promote the technologies and encourage economic development of the technology. It's time to change our priorities.
I think the vast majority of the American people can think enough in geopolical terms to realize that it is time to wean ourselves off this addiction to oil. Hell, the President said it himself in his State of Union address last year. Everyone now realizes that the safe money is not on oil. There are a number of imminently logical reasons for this:
1). Oil will become perpetually more expensive.
Since we are effectively burning the last billion or so years of organic carbon that has existed on this planet, we are eventually going to run out of oil. This fact is indisputable as the fact that the sun is going to explode in 9 billion years or so. We have absolutely no idea when we are going to run out of oil, but I'm guessing that it will be sometime in the next hundred years. And, as the resource gets more and more rare, it will get more expensive. Supply and demand. Wouldn't it be nice to run our economy on a resource that is only gets cheaper as we figure out newer, cleverer ways to produce it. Imagine America as an energy exporter!
2). We hate the people who have the vast majority of the oil.
Don't deny it....Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Venezuela, Russia. These countries just suck and their shitty govenments are only in our sphere of thought because they receive copious amounts of money from the US, Europe, and China. Let's invent something else and send them all back to the stone age where they should be. Unless you think that women being sentenced to death by stoning for admitting to being raped is an example of an "enlightened country." You want a war on terrorism. Let's make them so poor they won't be able to afford to buy a can of beans let alone a bomb.
3). Global Warming
Even if you don't buy the science, you have to admit to yourself that we can't keep dumping carbon into the atmosphere forever. Eventually we are going to have some kind of global impact. Might be ten years or a thousand but we'll eventually have an impact.
I actually can't think of any good arguments to use oil other than the fact that it is the cheapest thing going right now. Chemically, it's a very good carrier of energy. It is very stable and can form all kinds of cool polymers that we use a lot, but there are other ways to form those compounds and there are better carriers of energy than oil. It's the cheapest and easiest thing right now, but we all know that is going to change someday. We're being penny wise and pound foolish and that's not good business. It's time to change and the only way to do that is with government policies that promote the technologies and encourage economic development of the technology. It's time to change our priorities.
Monday, December 03, 2007
Bush's Boastful Bluster
Bush Scolds Congress
Doesn't this sound an awful lot like a little kid on a playground. "You better give me my candy or my daddy is going to come and beat you up." It's a shame and an embarrassment that this little brat is the leader of our country.
Doesn't this sound an awful lot like a little kid on a playground. "You better give me my candy or my daddy is going to come and beat you up." It's a shame and an embarrassment that this little brat is the leader of our country.
Hospital Image
Words (at the risk of sounding like a portentous English professor) are the most powerful tools in a doctor’s considerable arsenal. Wielded like a surgeon’s precisely held scalpel, a single word can peel back the layers of a person’s life. A deft question can open the floodgates of an amazing torrent of emotion, truth, and pain. An awkward insult can cleave a gaping canyon between two people while a comforting word can bridge any gulf. There are no descriptions of these events. There are only words that bring images, colors, and a small amount of the actual experience to this page. These are one student's words of one day in the hospital following a chaplain.
Let the mind stream
Let the truth flow
Let your soul slow
Let your light gleam
Computer Terminal
Colorful Images flash on the screen
Depicting the lives of people who suffer
People who don’t fit into small, white, blinking boxes
But who are put there because of expediency
Lives laid out under a rainbow.
One man far from home
Described with cold words and abbreviations
Knowledge and facts with little information
2nd floor
Hunting amid a frenzy of colors
Cubicle to windowless cubicle
Brightly colored nurses flash past
Help!
A man is reaching from the hallway as we walk past
He is crying for explanation behind smiling eyes
Alone with listening ears he asks for retreat
But the family arrives and the mask resumes
No explanation suffices as the conversation slides to normal.
Follow a proud, pole-toting lion into his den
Slow and deliberate with his words
The probing questions just brushing the surface
But with a superficial question
A blinding pain explodes and silences
A lion cub was lost
We leave a torn heart
That no amount of surgery can fix
6th floor
Noise and activity surround a small woman
She is sleeping entombed in her bandage
The family is there and awkward platitudes are exchanged
There is coughing she peers out through long suffering eyes
A stumbling prayer is better than no prayer at all
The contrasts strike with visceral force
The entrance in a light room
Filled with smiling, healthy people
Around a patriarch cheering for football
Our destination is not this light, but the dark
Across the curtain is a dark space with a darker individual
He is totally alone in the darkness
But he is happy to see us.
His stories are of very long suffering
Loss, pain, unbearable pain
His dark eyes appear dead as the sun sinks
But there is life in him and the pain confirms it
He talks of life, friends, love
The things we all want
The listeners treat
The lonely man tells his stories
His eyes become more animated with each passing minute.
We leave only slightly drained with the darkness complete
But a happier man for all that.
