The End.
3 Feb. 2003/Monday
Sean Hannity is such a narrow-minded parrot of the left-wing conservative viewpoint that I doubt he's had an original thought since he graduated grammar school.
Today I listened to his radio program and I noticed something interesting. He uses buzz words and cliche' phrases so often it's become transparently 'canned.'
"You liberals ..." and "Let me tell you why it' important to go to war with Iraq," and "Saddam is evil, and you bleeding-heart liberals just don't get it." He's so predictably one-sided it makes me laugh, to think that people actually call in on his phone segment and worship at the 'Hannity' alter - "Oh Sean, you're so fantastic!" Or, "Sean, I just want to thank you for tellig us the truth."
Hannity wouldn't know the truth if it bit him on the ass. I really don't believe he'd know the truth if God opened the gates of heaven and flooded the world with its light.
Hannity is one of those so-called info-tainers who have a single-minded purpose: To promote the Republican agenda - particularly the right-wing Republican agenda. I think he's a bigot, a hypocrite and a liar, whether he knows it or not.
It's been widely reported that Bush's claims of "proof" that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction are based on sketchy reports from the CIA, FBI, and several other covert agencies that monitor and gather information around the world. None of these agencies (at least none of their intelligence operatives who've gone on record) have verified the administration's claims. For example, several reports have been published about the lack of evidence linking al-Qaida to Iraq. Only one piece of datum, an al-Qaida operative who was wounded during the Afghanistan battles, was hospitalized in Baghdad for a period of time. But whether he's working with Saddam or anyone within that corrupt administration has NOT BEEN DETERMINED with any certainty.
In fact, operatives high up in the FBI and CIA have reputiated the president's claims, saying that much of Bush's rhetoric is based on tenuous and "murky" intelligence reports. Yet, the administration seems to think that unsubstantiated information is a solid foundation for declaring war. Absurd! But there's Sean "the Blind Idiot" Hannity spouting off daily about how clear the argument for war with Iraq is, and anyone who questions Bush's determination is - in the Hannity bible - either stupid, (liberal), blind to the truth (liberal) or a traitor (liberal).
In fact, Hannity proves his assinine short-sightedness every day whenever he engages with a caller who challenges him with facts.
His last and only response is to rant about "you liberals just refuse to see the danger to the U.S." and then he pulls out his favorite mantra: "It seems that liberals like Susan Sarandon have forgotten 9-11 and the horror that was visited upon this nation." Well, Hannity, 9-11 had nothing to do with Iraq, so what logic are you applying by bringing the subject into your argument for attacking Iraq. There never has been ANY evidence that Iraq had anything to do with 9-11. If anything, our cozy 'friends' the Saudis ought to be put under the microscope since most of the hijackers were from that nation.
I don't know what kind of 'octane' Hannity puts in his coffee or whatever his drink of choice is, but whatever it may be, its definitely blurred the lines between reality and fantasy in his brain.
Sad, but luckily we do live in a nation where baboons like Hannity can make a living by brown-nosing the administration's lackeys and blowing smoke in the eyes of the American people - at least in the ears of those who regularly listen to his show.
Like Limbaugh, Hannity doesn't bother to do any fact-checking when it comes to making claims about political decisions, world events or national issues. He simply latches onto whatever the president is 'selling' today and repeats it over and over again, as though it were sanctified truth.
Sorry, Sean, you're good for a laugh, and a lesson in how not to learn about the world we live in. Your mind-set is a paradigm for knuckle-dragging, gun-totin,' robber barons and industrial despots.
But more power to ya, amigo. You've got a few million 'sheep' following your lead and that's something. I doubt if any of the callers who agree with you have ever taken the time to THINK about what you and your ilk are actually saying or what you mean.
But sanctioning murder (and war is evil, Sean - didn't you know that?) by suggesting we 'blow Saddam's brains out' puts you on the same level as the unholy cretin you'd like to see annihilated - at any cost.
I don't want to get off onto a rant here (as Dennis Miller would say) but Hannity, why don't you do the world a favor and go strap on your 'gat, catch a military flight to Baghdad and try to assassinate Saddam yourself?
War - even war in the name of righteousness - is a messy, bloody affair and lots of bad things happen when people war against one another.
I think there are times when war is an option, but only when we know why we're fighting.
Happy trails. Vaya con Dios.
2 Feb. 2003/Sunday
On the heels of the tragedy yesterday I began searching the Internet for Web sites with information about shuttle Columbia. I found several useful sites and passed those along to my colleagues at the newspaper so they could get a story posted on the Web site.
However, reflecting about our reasons for space travel - the potential for knowledge that could heal human diseases, further efforts to clean up the planet (or at least , monitor its health) and, ultimately, the knowledge that may allow humankind to leave the planet sometime in the distant future, should expansion to other planets become desirable - I came across NASA's Web site with views of the earth from space. These images so moved me that I felt I ought to put them here, on my BLOG, to share them with anyone who may not yet have come across this particular Web site. So, if you want to the see the planet from a unique perspective, check it out.
Looking at the earth from above
Now, of course, comes the days of news media coverage and probes into the disaster. Unfortunately, there will be the usual loonys who claim that the shuttle was shot down by a terrorist on a hilltop in California with a high-powered laser (non-existent), so speculation that NASA somehow blew it and because of sloppy precautions, Columbia was lost. The nonsense will, inevitably, flow like the Mississippi River, sad to say. But eventually the 'facts' will bring to light what actually happened.
The fact is, at NASA's JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) in Pasadena, hundreds and hundreds of people work 'round the clock to devlelop safety systems and improve efficiencies for space vehicles and every one of those people (at least the one's I met) feel an obligation to put their very best effort into every project they're assigned. And when I say their very best, I mean their total, absolute commitment to finding solutions that WORK time and time again. Verifiable results are what these people live and die by; and I have no doubt about the scientists and technicians who labor in the space industry - they are good people, albeit a bit strange for most of our sensibilities. But a good bunch. Human life is precious to these people. During a weeklong seminar at CalTech (also in Pasadena) I was privileged to meet with scientists who are working on questions that most people never even think to ask, but which are fundamental to human existence - without exaggeration.
So I wish them all the very best. And I send my condolences to the team that worked on Columbia's last mission. I know that all of them, from the the risk-management researchers to the propulsion engineers to the communications and telemetry crew, are, today, broken-hearted.
And I send them a prayer for new ideas, renewed commitment and the strength to achieve their dreams.
I have, in the past 24 hours, prayed more than once for the families who survive the astronauts' passing into that sun-bright light that must have been their portal to a new frontier, and I pray that those family members and loved ones can look to the stars tonight and smile, knowing that their spouses and children and aunts and uncles now reside among those vast, limitless diamonds twinkling in the dark.
All will be well. We will continue to send brave people into space and we will continue to learn more and more about the nature of this universe and the very fabric of 'God,' if such an insight can be borne by human minds.
It's Sunday and I'm ready for rest. I'm tired and aching from the previous week's pressures and demands.
And, of course, the tax man cometh (aaaarrrgh!).
Play 'em as they lay 'em, and keep one eye on the table.
The following is a snippet of the article:
“Cool War” by Joy Gordon of Harper’s Weekly:
"In searching for evidence of the potential danger posed by Iraq, the Bush Administration need have looked no further than the well-kept record of U.S. manipulation of the sanctions program since 1991. If any international act in the last decade is sure to generate enduring bitterness toward the United States, it is the epidemic suffering needlessly visited on Iraqis via U.S. fiat inside the United Nations Security Council. Within that body, the United States has consistently thwarted Iraq from satisfying its most basic humanitarian needs, using sanctions as nothing less than a deadly weapon, and, despite recent reforms, continuing to do so. Invoking security concerns -- including those not corroborated by U.N. weapons inspectors -- U.S. policymakers have effectively turned a program of international governance into a legitimized act of mass slaughter.
Since the U.N. adopted economic sanctions in 1945, in its charter, as a means of maintaining global order, it has used them fourteen times (twelve times since 1990). But only those sanctions imposed on Iraq have been comprehensive, meaning that virtually every aspect of the country’s imports and exports is controlled, which is particularly damaging to a country recovering from war. Since the program began, an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five have died as a result of the sanctions -- almost three times as many as the number of Japanese killed during the U.S. atomic bomb attacks.
News of such Iraqi fatalities has been well documented (by the United Nations, among others), though underreported by the media. What has remained invisible, however, is any documentation of how and by whom such a death toll has been justified for so long. How was the danger of goods entering Iraq assessed, and how was it weighed, if at all, against the mounting collateral damage? As an academic who studies the ethics of international relations, I was curious. It was easy to discover that for the last ten years a vast number of lengthy holds had been placed on billions of dollars’ worth of what seemed unobjectionable -- and very much needed -- imports to Iraq. But I soon learned that all U.N. records that could answer my questions were kept from public scrutiny. This is not to say that the U.N. is lacking in public documents related to the Iraq program. What is
unavailable are the documents that show how the U.S. policy agenda has determined the outcome of humanitarian and security judgments.
It is worth remembering that the worst destruction done on U.S. soil by foreign enemies was accomplished with little more than hatred, ingenuity, and box cutters. Perhaps what we should learn from our own reactions to September 11 is that the massive destruction of innocents is something that is unlikely to be either forgotten or forgiven. If this is so, then destroying Iraq, whether with sanctions or with bombs, is unlikely to bring the security we have gone to such lengths to preserve."