Insert Trite Metaphor about a Corral Here

Posted on April 16, 2004 in Roundup

*UPDATED* Blogspot was down last night so I missed a few links. I put a double star next to each.

The Iraq War will be with us as long as there are purblind Middle Americans who think they’re doing good by fomenting trouble overseas. Nastiness by the wRong and the wRonger continued to plague bloggers this week. Could there be a united action to take against the Legions of the Just-Plain-Mean-Folks?

Politics

• Riverbend fulminated about how media blackouts support the war in Iraq:

  Why is it not ok to show dead Iraqis and American troops in Iraq, but it’s fine to show the catastrophe of September 11 over and over again? I wish every person who emails me supporting the war, safe behind their computer, secure in their narrow mind and fixed views, could actually come and experience the war live. I wish they could spend just 24 hours in Baghdad today and hear Mark Kimmett talk about the death of 700 “insurgents” like it was a proud day for Americans everywhere

• Evano follows up on Riverbend’s commentary by remarking

  We are not all tanks and guns. We are not all lying liars like W and Condi and Donald and Evil Dick. The face of our foreign policy and our adventurism and interventionism is not the true face of Americans.

• Mileah writes

  Things are moving along nicely for George W. “I’m a uniter not a divider” Bush. He’s single handedly united the Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq. They now seem to be having a bit of trepidation about being occupied by the Coalition of the Paid Off. The unusual thing is that they agree. Good job there, George.

• Jack Balkin took a quiz at LGF and found it pathetically easy to discern between the Nazi propagandists and LGF: but not for the reasons LGF wanted people to believe.
  
• Randy Paul didn’t feel like writing at length about Bush’s Tuesday press conference but said:

  In last night’s press conference I saw so many deer-in-the-headlights moments that I thought I was watching a remake of Bambi. Along with jumbo shrimp, military intelligence, and holiday death toll, someday Bush diplomacy will take its rightful place in the Oxymoron Hall of Fame.

• Joan of Arc watched as the USMC maneuvered to save the name of a stupid soldier.
  
• Andrea challenges you to guess who said certain things.
  
• Mike Golby reflects on the elections in his country:

  If South Africa is a one-party state, it is a direct result of policies implemented over centuries by succeeding colonial powers that succeeded only in driving South Africans to a common cause. Since 1912, the ANC has been that cause, first as an organisation, then as a liberation movement and only over the past ten years, as a political party.

• Andrew** compiled his own roundup of apologetics for the pResident’s lackluster press conference:

  I like to think of it this way. Say your daughter colored on the wall. You ask her and she says no. End of conversation, right?
  
  
  You’d be a sad excuse for a parent if it were so.
  
  
  It’s analogous to being a reporter.
  
  
  “Mr. President, do you think your administration made any mistakes leading up to 9-11?”
  
  
  “No.”
  
  
  End of conversation, right?

• Allison** likened American intelligence operations to playing a game of Clue with a very dumb partner.

Culture

• Artichoke Heart is out stumping her new book, Year of the Snake.
  
• Awake at Dawn reviews Prageeta Sharma’s The Opening Question.
  
• Denise mentions a new service called lexblog which allows lawyers to hire people to blog in their name. Sigh. All that time to scheme and no time to think and write?
  
• Kimber eloquently speaks out against using simple-minded behavioral modification as a strategy for dealing with autism:

  …Yes, you can teach a child with autism not to bang on the table with behavior modification. And that will make for less disruption in the classroom/dinning room/restaruaunt. But the child himself has no investment in the change beyond the punishment or the reward. It’s an external change, not an internal one. If you work with a child around the issues of others’ feelings and his feelings, how his banging effects those around him and why banging makes him feel better, you will start to give the child an investment in the process. You let them make the change in themselves. Give them time and something to bang on when it’s appropriate but make a deal that they don’t bang when it’s not.

• Kathryn Cramer’s recent experiences with the lizardoids of Little Green Footballs led her to hunt for resources on cyber-bullying:

  One complication not dealt with by most of these resources is group bullying by adults. Maneuvers that allow you to lose one cyber-stalker may inflame another. So it is necessary to deal with group bullying over the Internet from the top down.

• Victoria holds up a surprising example for young American women:
  

  I think Condoleeza Rice is much more a representative of feminism than Christina Aguilera and Brittany Spears I get so frustrated seeing young girls look up to idols who get their power through looks and musical and/or acting talent rather than women who have genuine power. No matter how much I disagree with Condee’s policies, I would rather see young black women look to her for their role model than to Janet Jackson.

• Jody has no pity for Randall Terry.
  
• Yule compares privatization in Massachusetts with communal property in Canada.

Religion

• Blaugustine surmounts computer failure and continues her conversations with God.
  
• Deborama questions whether the “crucifixion debt” must be paid for with pain and looks for a role model:

  A lot of women say that a major stumbling block to being a Christian is its lack of female role models. I would find it very hard to live a life “in imitation of Christ”. It would be beyond me. But to live a life in imitation of Mary Magdalene, this is something I can do. Mary was an outcast at times, but she was also a scholar and a leader of men. She was left alone to carry on, but when Jesus was with her, she loved him totally and understood him deeply.

• Loren has been reading Thomas Merton’s poetry.
  
• IreneQ contemplates the use and abuse of advising people to pray about their problems:

  One of the things that irritates me is how Mom sees prayer as the answer to everything. It’s hard to explain, because I certainly do believe in the power of prayer. Yet I get exasperated when I tell her stuff and her response is to tell me to pray. Like when I was discussing my apartment-hunting activities with her, she said, “Pray that God will guide you to the right one,” or something like that….I feel Mom is being glib. The words, “Have you prayed about it?” roll off her tongue so easily, sometimes I feel she doesn’t know what it’s like to grapple with the realities of life. For example, I once called her up to tell her I was feeling lonely. Boy, was that ever a mistake. The first thing she said was, “How’s your relationship with God??”

• Doug grapples with the “vision thing”:

  There is much talk of pastors and other leaders in the church “casting a vision” for local churches….But just as Christ has given us a mission statement, so he has given us his vision: We are his kingdom. Yet churches settle for so very much less. Even if it is somehow acknowledged that the church is the kingdom gathered in this world, it is often more a sentimental, imaginary thing rather a hard reality energizing, shaping, and guiding God’s people. Indeed, the phrase “God’s people” itself becomes sentimentalized under these conditions, or, worse yet, reduced to a legal contract between two parties. Neither comes close to Jesus Christ’s Lordship, and that’s precisely the rub. We’re happy to say Jesus is our Lord so long as he doesn’t have to be our Lord.

Personal

• Happy birthday to the Gray Bird!

• Maria dreamed of herself in a mini-skirt.
  
• bittersweet romance wrote about moving.
  
• Brian Kane shared some pictures that his three year old daughter took with his new digital camera.
  
• Crazy Tracy talks about a first date:

  She met me there–this woman named Wendi–and we proceeded immediately to first base. The field was wet and slick and the bases were smooth. She was quite skillful and educated about the game, beyond what most women can claim. She knew what she was doing. She knew what she wanted. I was scared and unsure…but after the first inning, I just sat back and enjoyed the ride.

• JadedJu treated herself badly after a job interview:
  

  Despite my best efforts, I realized that I had left my brain back in the car. I did use all the classic techniques for trying to cover the brain’s absence, but I’m fairly sure they caught on. There is only so much “oh, yes, that’s a really, really, really good question” stuff you can do before you actually have to say something meaningful. Tragically, nothing meaningful emerged.

• MacDiva confesses

  I drink coffee. My pattern is a couple cups of the hard stuff, with cream and artificial sweetener, when I arise. Then, later, a tall latte or short cup of the house brew at Starbucks. If I feel tired, I make the latte a double. My limit is a double latte and a couple cups of brew per day. When night clubbing, I sometimes drink Irish coffees. Seems harmless. But, according to yesterday’s The Wall Street Journal, I may have a drinking problem.

• Billy pays his taxes with displeasure:
  

  Studies have shown that fully one-half of the last-minute filers have all the symptoms of being temporarily legally insane. Getting in their way could result in serious injury or death. The other half … well, they’re just plain every-day crazy, and the closer it gets to the midnight filing deadline, the crazier they become.

• Pam gave blood.
  
• Bill developed a case of poison ivy. No gloating here. Plenty of calomine lotion being piped to Texas.
  
• Skinny Andrea has turned couch potato.
  
• Treesong is indefatigable about nature

  I feel that people are missing out on a wonderful spiritual experience by missing the sunrise — AND the sunset, and the beautiful colors of earth and sky throughout the rest of the day and night. Even though we’ve tried to pave it all over with concrete and blacktop, the world is still filled with awe-inspiring color.

• Stu remembered the first man in space.
  
• chari pokes fun at the way she got her finger stuck in a dispenser for wipes.
  
• Beata writes about the high monthly cost of keeping her grandmother in a nursing home.
  
• Sally bought a vacuum cleaner.
  
• Mary Lou** witnessed the vulgar antics of a covey of quail.
  
• Robert** went out to observe the cherry blossoms at Makino.

Missing Bloggers

• Give Love::Get Love (since March 18)
  
• In Sequence (since April 5)
  
• Nurse Ratched (Since March 1)
  
• Red Water Lily (since April 5)
  
• Shock and Awe(since April 4)

• Warm Verbal Tea (since April 2)
• Much of Blogspot (since April 15)

Recent Reading

• Children of the Alley : A Novel by Naghuib Mahfouz
  
• The Discovery of Poetry: A Field Guide to Reading and Writing Poems by Frances Mayes
  
• High Tide in Tucson : Essays from Now or Never by Barbara Kingsolver
  
• Introduction to California Spring Wildflowers of the Foothills, Valleys, and Coast by Phillip A. Munz (I slept with his grand daughter)
  
• Dhammapada: The Path of Perfection
  
• Thomas Frank’s Lie Down for America: How the Republican Party Sows Ruin on the Great Plains in Harper’s

Web Links

• Cyber-stalking resources
  
• The Truth about the so-called “Victims Rights Amendment”
  
• Trump Fires George W. Bush
  
• Walter Cronkite: Secrets and Lies becoming commonplace
  
• Sloganator Memorial
  
• Choose your savior
  
• Visions of Enlightenment: Understanding the Art of Buddhism

• What those Japanese tattoos really mean
  
• Subservient Chicken

*Neo-Nazis are driving a pet hate site of their’s to the top of the Google ranking for the word “Jew”. If you have a blog, you can fight back by putting this code on your site:

<A HREF=”http://www.jewfaq.org/” TARGET=”_new”>Jew</A>

Putting up this code does not imply endorsement of Ariel Sharon or the actions of the State of Israel.