are we all insane?

Everybody in the world is a fool except you and me, and sometimes I wonder about you. Consider these stories from this morning's newspaper:

Authorities have arrested a polygamist, head of a "church," who over the past four years has "excommunicated" men and "reassigned" their wives and children to other men, apparently without serious opposition or objection. He has about 10,000 followers. Let's see. . .how many gallons of Kool-Aid would be necessary. . .

A headline reads, "Violence obscures Iraq's gains." It turns out that the "gains" are being measured by the number of bodies showing up at the morgue, and the number for August is substantially lower than for July and for June. The terrorists must have read that story, too, because at least 50 died in Iraq today and August isn't over yet. So much for "gains" in Iraq.

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said yesterday that critics of the U.S. war "strategy" don't know their history, and are like those who tried to appease the Nazis. I'd say Rummy doesn't know his history, certainly not the history of Iraq or the Middle East. Neither he nor anybody else in the Bush Administration knew that Saddam, although a butchering murderer along the lines of Stalin, was a balance of power against Iran, Osama, and the al-Quaeda. A year after the "Axis of Evil" speech, President Bush was unaware that Muslims in Iraq were divided between the Shia and Sunnis. Rummy did not know and could not predict that the troops would have more trouble with the Fedayeen that with the overrated Republican Guard. Rummy seemed unaware of the numbers of troops and the time required to build new nations out of Germany and Japan, but instead insisted on attempting to do the job in Iraq with insufficient forces and on a ridiculously short schedule that collapsed. The Bush Administration had no strategy for the end of the war. . .but they certainly detest criticism.

Finally, to make my day, Michael "Heckuva Job" Brown says he regrets that FEMA had no plan for the day (month, year) after Katrina. His positive statements in the days after Katrina about help coming through from the federal government were just "White House talking points" to protect the President. Given the choice between lying to "protect" the President and telling the blunt truth, he lied. Now we know what "White House talking points" are. Just a pack of lies.

I could add something about John Karr, but that's old news. He must have done something bad to somebody, somewhere. Fly him back to Thailand.

And all that from Section A of the newspaper. I can understand why George W. Bush doesn't read newspapers. It will disturb your otherwise bland equanimity and might even prompt you to think.

saying goodbye to an old friend

I've just deleted the 1998 version of Quicken. I had to. I want to try a little on-line banking using Quicken but my bank, the Second National Bank of London (Kentucky, that is) insists on my using a newer version. So, I've installed the 2007 version of Quicken Basic (a dollar cheaper than the 2006 version at the local Office Depot - go figure). I'm going to miss the 1998 version because it was so clean and simple.

Why do I bother mentioning this arcane trivia? Because, of all the computer programs, I like Quicken the best. It ranks up there with e-mail, genealogy software, and the things you can do with digital photos as being Really Good Reasons to Buy a Computer. I liked the first version I installed, designed to run on DOS. The 1998 edition has worked despite upgrading to Win98, Win2000, and WinXP, and despite changing the hard drive twice. It just plugs along like the trusty Timex watch, a time-consuming thing to update but so nice to have when April 15 rolls around every year.

My regular readers of this blog are going to roll on the floor laughing when they read this because they know their father is not exactly first in line when new technology comes out. But, hey, sometimes you've gotta catch up with the rest of the world.

Ernesto, just go away

We thought the hurricane season this year was off to a slow start. Katrina, one year ago, was the eleventh named storm for 2005. This year has had four storms that posed no threat. But I kept telling myself that Hurricane Andrew was the first named storm of the 1992 season (sheesh, it seems like yesterday). Now we have this storm that has pounded Cuba and emerged into the Florida Straits, and is on its way to. . .who really knows? Take a look at the 3-day guesstimate map, which shows it going way east of where I live:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at5+shtml/150927.shtml?3day?large

The bad news is, this is a part of Florida that doesn't need another hurricane. They were criss-crossed by three hurricanes in 2004, one right after the other:

http://img.coxnewsweb.com/C/05/92/61/image_961925.jpg

George W. Bush is an arrogant idiot

I've been reading some new books about Iraq lately. One is Cobra II, written by a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general (the three-star kind of general) and a NY Times military correspondent, who go into excruciating and well-researched detail about the missteps of the Bush Administraton and senior brass. They don't seem to have set out to make Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and company look like aggressively uninformed dolts but that's the impression they leave. "Make no mistake about that," as Dubyah likes to say.

To summarize a long story, Bush went into Iraq with several objectives and failed at all except the toppling of Saddam. They sent a barely sufficient number of troops. The success of our troops, and our U.K. allies, is a tribute to the fighting spirit of our professional Army and Marine Corps. The CIA and military intelligence continually gave no useful information or gave false reports. George Washington knew as much about the location of the British Army as our field commanders knew about the Iraqis, which is to say, practically nothing.

Bush, et al., failed to understand the religious and ethnic subtleties of the people of Iraq. They failed to anticipate the Fedayeen resistance and failed to pay sufficient attention to them. They expected parades but our troops got showered with bullets and rocket propelled grenades. Once Saddam fled the city, Bush and the top brass believed the war was over, despite the fact that we were still engaged in combat in large areas of Iraq. Like the dog who chased cars until he caught one and didn't know what to do with it, they had no plan for the day after the war ground to a conclusion. Almost immediately, they began talking of bringing the troops home. They brought the experienced field commanders home and sent in replacements. They halted the influx of new military units. Keeping the peace in Iraq requires more troops than were needed to fight their way into Baghdad, because manpower is necessary to control the borders, man checkpoints, halt looting, engage in civil affairs, and keep the economy running.

In short, there was a window open in which to bring some semblance of democracy to Iraq but it was squandered by decisions to cancel an election, dissolve the Iraqi army (leaving thousands of men unemployed), and "de-Baathisize" the public institutions such as schools and universities to the point that they were crippled. That window is slammed shut.

So, now what? "Cut and run?" That was how we left Viet Nam but this part of the world is much more incendiary. We need to stay the course but do it more intelligently. Republicans ask, do the Democrats have better alternatives? That's a fair question, and in return I ask, do the Republicans have alternatives better than what we have seen to date? We have to wait until 2008 or later to find out, sad to say.

baseball in the minor leagues - you gotta love it!

Take a close look at this man. His name is Julio De La Cruz. He is a pitcher for the Clearwater Threshers, a Class A team in the Phillies system. Last night, he pitched the entire nine innings. . . and he pitched a no-hitter. Five strike-outs, and only one walk. There was one error charged to the third baseman that some scorers might have called a hit, but last night it was an error. A no-hitter is extraordinarily difficult in baseball. This is only the second one in Clearwater's 21-year history. You don't often see pitchers going from start to finish like he did, either. Start collecting his baseball cards, folks, we will be seeing more of him!

no party this year, she said

Boy, was she wrong! Surprise! And this photo includes only the family members who were able to come. The family came from California and Colorado, and Boston, and our oldest and dearest friends came down from Tallahassee.

There's one good thing about a birthday with a zero in it: You get to wait another ten years before you have to worry about it again. I promise, there will be a party then, too.

happy birthday!

If somebody had told this pretty young Michigan gal that she'd go to college in Florida and get a master's degree, that she would have four babies of her own and they would grow up to be happy and successful adults, that she would be a breast cancer survivor, that she'd still be married to the same guy after 34 years and, just before turning 60, she would start a new career working to protect children from abusive and broken homes who are at risk of becoming homeless or worse, I think she'd still have that same sweet smile!