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NOT FIT TO JUDGE

Guest Author March 24, 2005

The perplexing, appalling, heartbreaking Terri Shiavo case brings very modestly to mind Socrates's injunction that the proper study of philosophy is man. Perhaps the great Socrates could make the study of man a useful endeavor, but if the Schiavo case is any example, most of the rest of us don't seem up to the task.

But there is nothing new in recognizing man's heroic inadequacies. Consider the first stanza of the Christian Enlightenment poet Alexander Pope's The Proper Study of Mankind :

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of Mankind is Man. Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise, and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride, He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest, In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast; In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer, Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err, Alike in ignorance, his reason such, Whether he thinks too little, or too much: Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus'd; Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd; Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of Truth, in endless error hurl'd: The glory, jest and riddle of the world!

I would say that pretty neatly sums up the human handling of the Schiavo matter. It seems that every contrivance of man has fallen short on behalf of the helpless Terri Schiavo.

THE FIRE IN IRAN

Michael Ledeen March 24, 2005

This week throughout Iran there were monster demonstrations in eleven provinces and 37 cities, and many thousands — one source said more than 30,000 — people were arrested, some only briefly, others shipped off to the infamous prisons and torture chambers of the regime. The most dramatic events took place in Shiraz, where the demonstrators directed a chant toward Washington: "Bush, you told us to rise up, and so we have. Why don’t you act?"

Which is precisely the right question. The president publicly promised the Iranian people that the United States would support them if they acted to win their own freedom, and the Iranians are now calling on Bush to make good on that promise.

CLEOPATRA WAS A BLONDE

Dr. Jack Wheeler March 24, 2005

No, this is not a blonde joke. If you want one of those, go to this week’s Humor File. Cleopatra was in fact a blonde. That’s because she was not Egyptian. She was a Macedonian Greek, with hair as blonde as Alexander’s.

Alexander conquered Egypt in 332 BC, then went on to subdue all of the Middle East. When he died nine years later, his just-conquered empire was fought over and carved up by his generals. The one who ended up running Egypt was Ptolemy (367-283 BC). Declaring himself Pharaoh, he founded the Ptolemaic Dynasty, with twelve Ptolemies in succession, many of whom had wives named Cleopatra. The Cleopatra we know, lover of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, was the daughter of Ptolemy XII, and entitled Cleopatra VII (69-30 BC).

There was not a drop of Egyptian blood in the Ptolemies. They remained 100% Greek, including the Queen of the Nile herself Cleopatra. Can you imagine Elizabeth Taylor as a blonde? It kind of shakes up your image of history.

I am writing this overlooking the Nile in Cairo. The Pyramids of Giza are in the distance. If there is one thing omnipresent in Egypt it’s history - and most all of that history is old, in more ways than one. For 3,000 years, Egypt has been a sleeping giant. Now it may be about to reawaken.

EARTH TO SPACESHIP PUTIN

Dr. Jack Wheeler March 24, 2005

The White House is becoming increasingly concerned about Pootie-Poot. He actually said point-blank to one of Bush’s key advisors: “Mr. Bush is in no position to criticize me on my actions towards the Russian press - look at how he fired Dan Rather.”

FIREFOX AND THUNDERBIRD – DID I SPEAK TOO SOON?

ttpn March 24, 2005

Now that I’m using Firefox and Thunderbird exclusively, I’ve become disappointed. Not surprisingly, I’ve read more about them, and a number of blemishes have been showing up in the Information Technology press. Some even question the integrity of Mozilla Organization.

Furthermore, press reports indicate that Internet Explorer 7 will be released this year. It will have a tabbed interface, cut way down on resource use, and allow third party additions that will dig less deeply into the operating system itself. I’ve also heard this directly from two Microsoft contacts, both of whom are in positions to know.

CASTRO AND MRS. BLANCO

Guest Author March 17, 2005

[Cuban-born writer Humberto Fontova has just published Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant ]

It gets old. It really, really gets old.

I refer to all the moralizing and humbug by U.S. political and business hucksters when they visit Cuba. Take Louisiana's own Democratic governor, Kathleen Blanco, on her visit to Castroland last week. If the woman had simply told us: "Look, Cuban-Americans, there ain't enough of you voting in Louisiana to make any difference to me. Worse, all you Cubans are Republicans and didn't vote for me or contribute to my campaign anyway. I owe you people nothing." How refreshing it might have been!

But no. She insists on warbling about the "strictly business" aspects of the visit and how this "builds bridges with the Cuban people," and how this "positions Louisiana for dealing with Cuba after the transition," etc., etc. The best came when she rationalized her luncheon with the mass murderer himself. She did it, said her spokesperson, "out of respect for the Cuban president."

Mrs. Blanco, I realize you're very busy with state business, but in case you haven't heard: There have been no "presidential" elections in Cuba for the past 46 years, ma'am.

WORTH IT IN BAGHDAD

Dr. Jack Wheeler March 17, 2005

Major General Peter Chiarelli, head of US military’s Task Force Baghdad and commander of the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division, spoke a few days ago at a AUSA (Association of the United States Army) meeting at the Ft. Hood (Texas) Officer’s Club. A friend of To The Point’s took notes. This is how it really is.

*Baghdad is about the same size, geographically, as Texas’ capital of Austin, with ten times the folks: 700,000 for Austin, 7 million for Baghdad.

*Baghdad’s main problem area has been a huge slum called Sadr City. Last fall, there was an average of 160 terrorist attacks per week. For the last three months, they have flatlined: five to zero a week.

*The media blared in front-page headlines about the 100 Iraqis killed in Baghdad as they were lined up to enlist in the police and security service. It was never reported that the next day, there were 300 lined up in the same place.

THUNDERBIRD

ttpn March 17, 2005

Outlook Express remains the default mail client for most Windows users.. Most people are used to it, and it does an acceptable job of getting and sending mail. Furthermore, Outlook Express has a built in news reader. I’ve mentioned newsgroups in the past, including my column on Firefox two weeks ago. I’ll mention them again later in this column.

If you feel comfortable with Outlook, and rarely use newsgroups, by all means keep using it. Microsoft's programs work perfectly with Microsoft's operating systems. If, however, you want a fast, efficient, easy and - perhaps most important - expandable e-mail program, you should switch to Mozilla’s Thunderbird, companion to the Firefox browser.

THE REAL LOCKBOX

Dr. Jack Wheeler March 16, 2005

So now Alan Greenspan says the “lockbox” the Democrats pretend to advocate for Social Security must be “real.” Addressing the Senate Committee on Aging this Tuesday the 15th, he proclaimed:

In addressing Social Security's imbalances, we need to ensure that measures taken now to finance future benefit commitments represent real additions to national saving. We need, in effect, to make the phantom `lock-boxes' around the trust fund real.

It’s going to be very interesting to watch Democrats squirm - and a lot of squishy Republicans - when conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill take Greenspan’s demand seriously.

They are going to advocate something called The Real Lockbox. It puts the Dems in a lockbox without a key.

There are some very smart Congressional Republicans getting behind The Real Lockbox concept, which is far superior to President Bush's own private accounts plan. Whether they end up in a tug-of-war with the Bushistas, or the latter admit to the flaws of their initial proposal, is going to be a major political drama this spring.

FRUITCAKE FASCISTS

Dr. Jack Wheeler March 16, 2005

The decision by San Francisco Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer this week that withholding marriage licenses from homosexuals is somehow unconstitutional is the latest example of America’s retreat from democracy. The type of government America is moving towards is a krytocracy.

Remember the word. American democracy has been superceded, replaced, by a krytocracy - a government of judges. Unelected judges.

America’s Constitution and the laws passed by Congress under its authority no longer have any meaning. The Constitution’s only - only - meaning is what judges say it has. We live in an era of krytocratic tyranny: rule by the arbitrary feelings and whims of judges.

But it’s worse than that. The Kramer decision is yet another example of the seizure, the wholesale theft, of American culture by a tiny fraction of Americans. Less than 2% of Americans are homosexual, engaging in practices the vast majority of Americans find abnormal and perverse if not morally repugnant - yet are willing to tolerate and ignore.

Yet being tolerated and left alone is not good enough. Despite the fact that no culture in human history has ever looked upon homosexuality as psychologically normal and made no legal, moral, or cultural distinction between its activities and those of normal folks, homosexuals are waging a war upon America to force her to do so. That’s why they have become Fruitcake Fascists.

DON’T DEMOCRATS KNOW HOW TO PLAY FOOTBALL?

Guest Author March 10, 2005

Partisan politics in Washington this season are getting interesting, as a few Democrats are cautiously beginning to challenge their leadership's strategy of total opposition to major Bush initiatives. It is dawning on some Democrats that their all-defense strategy may not pair up well with President Bush's all offense strategy.

President Bush plays politics the way my friends and I used to play pick-up football when I was a kid. In the huddle, the quarterback would tell everyone else to go out long. On the snap the quarterback would dance around in the backfield until one of us five or six receivers got open, at which point he would complete the pass. With both sides going long all the time, we often ended up with basketball scores.

The Democrats, on the other hand, when on offense, merely receive the snap and fall on the ball. When on defense, they put all their men on the line, trying for a quick sack of the quarterback. If the quarterback is too agile for them, they are vulnerable to be scored upon, given their lack of a pass defense.

When two such teams meet, the best score the all-defense Democrats can hope for is a 0-0 tie. The best score the all-offense Republicans can expect is at least a 56-0 win.

ITALIAN MORAL STUPIDITY IN IRAQ

Guest Author March 10, 2005

Giuliana Sgrena does not lack a sense of self importance. The 56-year-old journalist for the Italian communist newspaper Il Manifesto thinks she knows so many deep dark secrets the U.S. military tried to shut her up permanently.

Sgrena went to Iraq to report on the heroic resistance to the American imperialists. Dutch journalist Harald Doornbos rode in the airplane to Baghdad with her. "Be careful not to get kidnapped," Doornbos warned Sgrena.

"You don't understand the situation," she responded, according to Doornbos' account in the Nederlands Dagblatt. "The Iraqis only kidnap American sympathizers. The enemies of the Americans have nothing to fear."

She got nabbed on her way back to her hotel. Sgrena told her captors she was on their side, and suggested they kidnap an American soldier instead. But the U.S. government doesn't pay ransoms.

RUSSIA LOSES ANOTHER ONE

Dr. Jack Wheeler March 10, 2005

A friend of mine whose name you know but is embarrassed to have his name mentioned and I will never forget standing on a street corner in Kishinev, Moldavia. We stood there looking like fools trying to keep our jaws from dropping open and our necks from snapping back and forth - for everywhere we looked, we saw another stunningly beautiful woman walk by. Between the two of us, we had been to just about every country in Europe, and we agreed: the most beautiful women on the European continent were right here. Kishinev left Paris in the dust.

That was back in 1990, and the place was still part of the Soviet Union. During World War II, Stalin decided to move the USSR-Romania border westward, from the Dniester River to the Prut River, and called the territory he had seized the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldavia. The smallest of the USSR’s 15 republics (at 13,000 square miles, slightly larger than Maryland), it along with the others declared independence in 1991, changing its name to Moldova and its capital to Chisinau. Except there was this one little problem.

THE UNKNOWN KING OF TERROR and the Coming Lebanon Civil War

Dr. Jack Wheeler March 9, 2005

Last week, we discussed how there could be a light at the end of the terrorist tunnel. Now let’s talk about how that light could be an oncoming train.

One of the most famous quotes of America’s favorite philosopher, Yogi Berra, is: “It’s never over until it’s over.” We’ve all been swept away with democracy seeming to march ineluctably forward in the Middle East, thrilled by the sea of red and white Lebanese flags waved in Beirut’s Martyr’s Square, and confidant that the Cedar Revolution will be victorious over Syrian imperialism. We need to pause now, take a deep breath, and heed Yogi’s words.

I have a very bad feeling about Lebanon that this could turn out really ugly. Dispatch after dispatch, story after story, and all you read about is Syria’s getting its troops and spies out of its colony. Congressmen like Darryl Issa (R-CA) write newspaper op-eds entitled “Lebanon: Democracy’s Next Stop.” All without a word about Hezbollah. All without a word about Iran.

Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is a puppet of the Mullacracy in Tehran. The people who give the orders to the Syrian troops in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley are Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the Pasdaran. Hezbollah was founded in 1982 among Lebanon’s Shia Moslems with money and weapons from Iran. It is run by the world’s worst terrorist, who is most decidedly not Osama Bin Laden.

RATHER DISTORTED

Dr. Jack Wheeler March 8, 2005

I write this with a Reidel glass of Rosemount Merlot at the ready, toasting the forced departure of an individual who has infested America’s airwaves for 43 years - ever since he joined CBS News in 1962. I won’t be watching Dan Rather’s final broadcast this evening, just as I haven’t watched CBS News for many years. I’ll merely sip my merlot in gratitude for all those bloggers who exposed Rather’s Memogate and did him in. And my friend Brent Bozell.

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