The Dole Blog

Can we get rid of the Thousands Standing Around (Transportation Security Agency) now? There’s no director, and we all know it’s a pointless, lousy, agency that doesn’t do it’s job. All it does it raise the level of discontent and make us more of a police state.

It doesn’t provide jobs to Americans either; those are mostly Phillipinos or Ethiopians, which would be GREAT if we were in the Philippines or Ethiopia, and we’re not. And I’m all for functioning governmental agencies, but really, what does the TSA protect us from? Our cellphones?

Tony Blair (whoops, just typed his name as Bliar, as in B-liar) admitted that he would have supported removing Saddam Hussein from power even without the argument that Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction. In response,

A lawyer for Saddam Hussein’s jailed former deputy prime minister, Tareq Aziz, wrote to Britain’s top legal adviser Saturday asking permission to prosecute Blair for war crimes.

It seems to me that Blair, former Prime Minister of what was, until World War II, one of the greatest modern empires, denounced the possibility of leading his still great island nation with dignity and independence and claimed the role waiting for him as the greatest lap-dog-prime-minister of the expanding United States empire. So much for the inspiring empire on which the sun never set; the British empire that should have inspired awe in all people, despite its many faults, because of the grandeur it promised and the hope (even false hope) which it engendered. The empire that challenged France for moral greatness even in France’s best day, the empire which challenged even the intellectual and artistic grandeur of the short-lived Weimar Republic — that empire is no more. That is nothing new, but, Blair, you have sounded the final note. Was that your wish?

Postscript: I titled this post “Blair War Crimes” well aware of the bluntness of that title. I do not mean to adjudicate blame without cause. There are many people who have committed war crimes. Some of those people have been tried and prosecuted, some have not. I say “Blair War Crimes” with perfect sincerity and with an understanding of what that means; he has not been found guilty in a court of law, so I cannot say he is guilty except by the perception that he has, along with many others, committed war crimes.

India has created a new state by splitting the large southern region of Andhra Pradesh. Several ministers have resigned in protest. (A note: be careful reading the linked article: the way it’s written seems to imply that part of southern India just became a new country, which it didn’t. Basically, it would be like Texas, or California, being split into two states by the federal government.)

Is there a good justification as to why some areas of regions, seeking autonomy or independence, succeed in political demands, and other areas don’t succeed? What prevents some separatist movements, like the Basque (to take just one example), from succeeding, while others do not fail in their demands?

I don’t want to comment on politics today.  Too much depressing news out there, about war, health  care, and Copenhagen.  I might comment later.  Not now.

Anyway, I think I’m supposed to be doing other things.  I’m giving an oral presentation on my thesis — and yes, for those of you who think otherwise, for a bachelor’s degree in political science a thesis in necessary — tomorrow.

Who am I? Why do I have a blog, and why should you read it? Can anyone blog? These questions plague me now that I have a blog beyond facebook. Of course, the question ‘who am I?’ has long plagued me, as it should. But now, let me use a blog to study that question.

Anyone can blog. Not everyone can blog well; it takes a skill with words, with an audience (is there one?), and with a use of sources, or, on an opinion-based post, a consistency with an open mind to any responses. I’m under the impression, because I read as well as write, that a good blog has to keep its audience interested. Not every post has to be interesting to every person — although I try to make all posts applicable in some way to everybody — but there has to be something interesting for everyone. So, what am I writing about here? By ‘who am I?’ I mean, I think, what would I write about here. The answer is that I write about the past, the future; education, family, politics, and the frequently intangible things that make up our world.

Why should you read what I have to say? Well, that is up to you. You may know me; at this point, I think you do. So I hope you read because something here interests you.

Congress and football. Or maybe it’s, football and congress. I’m not sure it matters, even if there is a difference. What’s congress up to, you might ask? Glad you asked. “a House subcommittee approved legislation Wednesday aimed at forcing college football to switch to a playoff system to determine its national champion“. There was a no vote, by Rep. John Barrow, D-Ga., who thought “we have more important things to spend our time on”.

Really congress? Great. Good job. I’ll agree with John Barrow on this one. Mind you, this isn’t nearly as troublesome as the fact that, back in July, there was a bill in congress to ban mermaids, and other halfbreeds. Another effort to delve into science fiction? I don’t think so. Senator Brownback was serious, and he’s tried to introduce this bill before.

Another one for the record books? I won’t even try to predict what they think of next. Some legislation about proper words during the ‘holiday season’?

According to Andrew Sullivan, the Associated Press says that

[Afghan President Hamid Karzai] said it will be at least 15 years before his government can bankroll a security force strong enough to protect the country from the threat of insurgency.

Great. Can we leave now? I can’t think of any reason we should have our military there at this point.

When is a dead person not dead? [Insert joke answer here]

Robert Lanza, M.D., might suggest a dead person is not ever dead. In fact, he does suggest that. He’s not the first to suggest that; Buddhist philosophy beat him to the punch by many hundred years. And he won’t be the last to suggest that. Lanza says that quantum physics says that, “Although individual bodies are destined to self-destruct, the alive feeling – the ‘Who am I?’- is just a 20-watt fountain of energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesn’t go away at death. One of the surest axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can neither be created nor destroyed.” And, there are multiple universes operating on the same plane in time, and different planes in space (no, this isn’t science fiction), and death does not happen in any of these universes.

According to Biocentrism [the theory of multiple different, simultaneous, universes], space and time are not the hard objects we think. Wave your hand through the air – if you take everything away, what’s left? Nothing. The same thing applies for time. You can’t see anything through the bone that surrounds your brain. Everything you see and experience right now is a whirl of information occurring in your mind. Space and time are simply the tools for putting everything together.

When a body dies, when it expires, the energy doesn’t expire, according to Biocentrism, and Lanza. That’s hardly a new idea. But it’s an idea that negates the need for religion, rather than accentuates the need for religion. If you, or the energy that is you, continues to live that energy has to go into something, or be somewhere. So if we sit around wondering if your energy, that was you before you died, has made it to heaven or to hell, the answer is neither. That energy is still out there floating around somewhere, and to label it as either heavenly or hellish enemy takes away from the fact that it’s on Earth somewhere.

Palin, Palin, Palin, get your Palin here! That’s about all I ever hear out of the media — unless it’s Tiger Woods’ turn, or ACORN, or something else that gets its week’s worth of attention. Palin, though, never goes away; not since she became something to talk about 16 months ago. So, when I read David Corn’s latest Mother Jones article, I had a reaction worth commenting on. The article, “Palin’s Latest Ethics Flap”, is about how, since her resignation as governor, Palin has not been held accountable in the ethics complaint filed, while she was governor, about Alaska Fund Trust and personal financial gain for Palin. My reaction to the article, and this is the important part, was “so what”; you who know me know that I care about ethical behavior, both in and out of the government, etc., etc., etc.. “So what”, I thought, not because I don’t care, but because there seem to be more important causes (John Yoo, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush).

It becomes inevitable that one “so what” could lead to another. I retract my reaction to the Sarah Palin article, which matters as much as if she were actually still in charge of a state, or a corporation, or anything larger than a household — it even matters there. My “so what” reaction is exactly what’s wrong with the system. If Palin has ethical issues, should we not care because Bush was worse; if Bush has ethical issues, should we not care because Hitler was worse? Like Andrew Sullivan does every day in his journalistic pursuit of Palin, we have to care.

Issues are not dealt with in binary. There is right and wrong, but right and wrong exist along a flexible continuum, as time changes. At our current place in history, it is wrong to be a government official (at least, in our form of government) who does not act within the rules of law. More importantly, and this applies to Palin, Bush, Cheney, and others, government officials who make mistakes need to, have to, be able to admit to those mistakes and improve as the system desires them to improve. That, we are lacking.