Sistani, the main Sh’ite authority in Iraq, is a quietist Sh’ite....what that means is that the tradition he adheres to is one that dictates a seperation between civil government and the religious leadership.  He is different from Khomeini in that aspect, as Khomeini (and the clerics that currently lead Iran) are motivated by a different ideal, called velayat-i-faqih, which basically says that the judicial basis for all civil and criminal law is the Koran, and that the Koran is the litmus for any decision by any court.  Khomeini publicized this ideal in the mid-to-late 70’s, and used it to incite the Sh’ia in Iran to overthrow the Shah.  Sistani doesn’t agree with that mindset. 

Now, that doesn’t mean that Sistani doesn’t throw his weight around....he does.  However, he has always been adamant about the Iraqi people having the right to determine their own future.  Even the massively anti-American Asia Times makes the point that Sistani wants Iraq to be run free from religion, but protective of religion. 

Here’s an analogy:  We wish for Christian values from our government, and we wish for moral leadership.  However, we don’t want a national government that forces Christianity on us.  That is what Sistani wants....he wants Islam protected, and wants good Islamic people to be freely elected, but he does not want an Iranian-style theocracy.  Muqtada al-Sadr, the punk Khomeini-wannabe wants to establish a theocracy in Iraq, but his actions in Najaf really hurt his cause with Sh’ia in Iraq. 

Another thing is that the Iraqis know that Iran is playing games (pg. 36) with their attempts to establish their right of self-determination.  Even the Sh’ia in Iraq see Iran as a danger, and they are not believers in the idea that Iran is a paradise of freedom and religious security.  Not many Iraqis desire Islam to dictate the terms of government (see pg. 35), and more desire the politicians to support religion and make sure it is protected than want the religion to be imposed. 

One last thought....there are demographic situations that also dictate that the Iraqis will be different than the Iranians.  90% of all Iranians are Sh’ia...in a worst case scenario, they can effectively roll over the opposition.  In Iraq, the percentage is 60%, leaving the fiercely independant (and Sunni) Kurds and the remainder of the Sunni Muslims holding a much larger share of the political power.  The power will have to be shared in Iraq, as the Sh’ia can’t just roll over the other 40%.  If they tried, there would be civil war, and the Iraqis would, like the Russians in WWI, cease to be an effective threat if they stood with Iran against us.  However, the second of the two demographic conditions preclude that....and that is the rampant pro-Western Iranian youth.  Any move by the Iranians to attack American forces would not be supported by the huge percentage of pro-democratic Iranians, and the government would lose its ability to wage a full-scale war. 

A side note:  This is why Bush’s tactics have been very prudent where Iran is concerned.  He has no urge to unilaterally attack Iran, because that would probably be the only way the Iranians would be drawn towards supporting their theocratic government.  However, if the Iranians see their government putting them at risk, or aggressing against Iraq or the United States, they will begin putting pressure on them to stop.  They won’t stop, of course, and the people will revolt.  It is that close to occurring in Iran, and Bush knows it.  Hence, the allowing of this EU-Iran negotiation over the nuclear power.  If Iran decides to use their nuclear plants to produce weapons, and the United States acts, we will have a moral imperative.  We don’t have that right now.....in the eyes of the Iranian rank and file. 

We have created the conditions where the Iraqis landed a telling blow in favor of their future.  We need to nurture that, protect them, and allow them their right of self-determination.  That will kill the festering sore of terrorism in that country, and further the War on Terror, as planned.

10 Worst

10. Lyndon Johnson, who founded the “Great Society”, which established the Socialism that has so deeply pervaded our Government as to not even be remotely funny. His actions settled the “Take from the productive, and give to the sick, lame, and lazy, with extra money for every new child” procedure now followed at all levels of government.

9. Richard Nixon, who let himself be bullied by a Democratic Congress into walking away from a war that was unpopular, and for so damaging the reputation (covering up the break-in at the Watergate complex) of the Presidency that every two-bit reporter is looking to make his bones on any and every public official.

8. Howard Stern, for making it not only acceptable, but almost obligatory to publicly talk about things that are not subjects for public conversations, all in the name of the First Amendment.

7. Janet Reno, for doing more to ruin the value of human rights and Constitutional protections in America than anything John Ashkkkroft is accused of.

6. Jesse Jackson, for not only forcing race relations backwards fifty years (by using threats of racism to extort money from The Man) but also for the beam in his eye while preaching about the motes in others’.

5. Bill/Hillary Clinton - Whitewater, Travelgate, Vince Foster, Monica and the blue dress, Mogadishu, Kosovo, refusing custody of Osama bin Laden three times, the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, you name it.

4. MoveOn(dot)org for making hypocrisy a semi-legitimate tactic in Presidential election politics, and for making it okay for kids to be discussing and arguing that “oral sex isn’t sex” with claims that the President lying under oath is perfectly acceptable.

3. Michael Moore for looking for anything and everything he can invent or discover to make America look bad. For attacking the credibility of the election process here in the United States. For insulting the intelligence of all Americans, but only while overseas. Plus, he’s fat.

2. Jimmy Carter for giving the Islamofascists the first hint that America could be cowed by a bunch of thugs wearing masks because of TV cameras. For apologizing to the Soviet Union and allowing them to think that they had the right to oppress those people. For all of the ineptness with which he has conducted his ham-handed relations after getting his ass kicked out of office, and taking the mantle of “World’s Election Approver” onto his own shoulder (allowing other nations to call our own 2000 & 2004 elections questionable)

1. The ACLU for using the courts to force an anti-American agenda onto unwilling American citizens, by using distorted definitions of plain English to sympathetic judges. They have defined “establish” as “any display, reference, or indirect allusion to, by any agent at any level of government or pseudo-government, public buildings and institutions, or locations open to the general public”. They have managed to have the Pledge of Allegiance declared unConstitutional because of the phrase “one nation under God”. They have defended the actions of a school board that declared the Declaration of Independence in violation of “separation of church and state” (which never actually appears in the Constitution). They have sued to have a major part of History erased in the effort to quash Christianity, while still endorsing the religion of America’s enemies. They deserve to be escorted to the border, have their citizenship stripped, and forever barred from re-entering the country.

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Now, we have the rest:

10 Best

10. Neil Armstrong, who was the first man to step on another Solar System object, and inspired a whole generation of Americans who grew up watching the stars and dreaming big dreams.

9. Henry Kissinger, for establishing the rules by which modern diplomacy can occur. Nixon may have gone to China, but it was Dr. Kissinger that booked the trip.

8. Bill Gates, who brought the personal computer to the point where everyone from 5 to 95 can operate them, and helped to bring the Internet to libraries all over the country.

7. The American Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, for giving a love of country and family to a whole generation of young men and women. (Honorable Mentions to the Boys/Girls Club, DeMolay/Rainbow, and other civic and religious groups dedicated to the same causes.)

6. Stephen King, for showing us all that it is okay to laugh at our fears, by making those fears so very real in the most gentle medium imaginable.

5. Martin Luther King, who may have had his problems, but he did a great deal to show the way to racial blindness.

4. Jonas Salk, for the fact that no one suffers from polio any more.

3. Alan Greenspan, for helping to keep the world’s most powerful economy running for most of a generation, and doing his job almost without fanfare. (Seriously, how many people would be able to pick him out of a lineup?)

2. George W. Bush, who has done more to recover America’s resolve and reputation than any President since Eisenhower. He has freed tens of millions of people for the first time in a generation, while managing to recover the domestic economy from an inherited recession

1. Ronald Reagan for knocking out America’s only real opponent without firing a shot, while simultaneously developing the greatest economy in all of History, slashing inflation, more than doubling the DJIA (from just over 1,000 to just over 2,500), rebuilding both the size and morale of the Armed Forces (remember “Top Gun”? The 600-ship Navy?), and showing that it was okay to be proud again.

Spread it around…

The Senior Year Meme

What year was it?
‘83-84

What were your favorite bands or musical artists?
Aerosmith. Boston. REO Speedwagon. Rush. Iron Maiden. Styx. Sammy Hagar. Van Halen. Pretty much what is defined as “Classic Rock” nowadays *shrug*

What was your favorite outfit?
Jeans and a T-shirt. It still is.

What was up with your hair?
Fairly short. Long enough to grab, but not long enough to need a ponytail.

Who were your best friends?
Glenn. Jacqui. Richard. David. Tammy and Aline. Most of the debate team.

Where did you work?
Lotsa places. Bussed tables at Pizza Hut. Worked at O.G.Wilson’s at the mall. Telemarketed. Worked at the mall arcade.

Did you take the bus?
Midland didn’t have a public transportation and I only lived about 2 blocks from the school. I didn’t own my first car, though, until my 20th birthday.

Who did you have a crush on?
A few young ladies. I was a little nerdly, but not so much that I didn’t attract girls. It would be ungentlemanly to elaborate on some of the more interesting occurrences that year.

Did you fight with your parents?
My parents had separated (I found when I was 21 that they had never been married, and New York didn’t recognize Common-Law marriages in the mid-1960s) when I was 3, and I rarely spoke to him, but I got along pretty well with my mom.

Who did you have a CELEBRITY crush on?
Kirstie Alley (during “Cheers”, she was s-s-s-s-mokin’!).

Did you smoke cigarettes?
Yeah, about a pack a day. Plus the occasional “experimentation”.

Did you lug all of your books around in your backpack because you were too nervous to find your locker?
No.  I traded books and supplies as necessary between classes. But I always carried some sci-fi book or other for the slack times…

Did you have a ‘clique’?
No, I was one of the outsiders, having joined that school (after all the cliques had been firmly established among the classes) halfway through my junior year. I had contacts just about everywhere, but no cliques.

Did you have “The Max” like Zach Kelly and Slater?
Who?

Admit it, were you popular?
“Popular” as in “well-known” - yes. “Popular” as in “everybody wants to hang out with me” - nope. Real friends were few and far between.

Who did you want to be just like?
Tom Cruise from “Risky Business”. But I always ended up a little like Corey Feldman, except without all the supermodels from Sweden and the fancy cars.

What did you want to be when you grew up?
Grow...? Up? Seriously, I just adapted. I have lived a fairly hectic lifestyle, been halfway around the world and back, seen some sights that would amaze and amuse just about anyone, and been impressed by most. In my day I have been many things: a grocery sacker, a retail sales clerk (many times with many different products), a Care Bear ^TM (just for an afternoon), a busboy and dishwasher, arcade attendant, a pizza delivery guy, a Surface-To-Air Missile Radar Tech, a Bombing Range Safety Coordinator, a firefighter, a shipboard radar operator, a professional softball umpire (ASA), a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman, a telemarketing manager, an Office Manager for an ISP, a computer hardware technician, and finally self-employed. I have tutored students from elementary all the way up through college (including a few people going for their MA needing help with the hard sciences).

I just strived to be wiser and kinder, as well as older. The rest takes care of itself.

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Let me know if you decide to answer/post these, so I can link you…

Can we do anything about this question?  Can we find anyone to look at this thing with an objective eye, and report the truth about this? 

Yeppers....me!!  MWAHAHAHAHAAAA!  No, really....

Seriously, when I was younger, my mother and father divorced.  I had the unique opportunity (though far more unique then, than it probably is NOW...) to live with both parents for an extended period of time.  I’ve been there.  I’ve seen the different methods, and been exposed to both mom-less and dad-less environments. 

So, that being said, what you will read in a moment is a purely subjective review and opinion, with a few facts being thrown in. 

There is a balance that having intimate role models brings to the table.  There is an inheent knowledge of that....even by divorced people who look for a “proper role model” for their child.  I know lots of divorced women, with kids, who make sure the kids are spending time with someone they percieve as a proper male role model, such as an uncle, or a grandfather.  However, the ability to find such a role model does not replace the fact that the trauma that beheading the role model creates.  Someone loses face....sorry, but that is the way it is.  The child(ren) are put with a primary and secondary caregiver, and there is the perception of a ‘winner’ and a ‘loser’. Who loses more often?  The man, who is the species aggressor/defender, and not the nurturer.  That intimate learning role is reduced, inherently, and the ‘winner’, the nurturing mother/female role, is increased. 

In short, a divorced dad is usually put into a situation where his role in the child’s life is explicitly reduced.  That role cannot be replaced.  Since the majority of divorces are not because of abuse, many non-harmful fathers are being emasculated because of the desire for divorce.  This separation from the male role model, and the point of view of the father being ‘punished’ for no understandable reason....do you think that this isn’t going to send a signal to the child?  An inherent “Mother is better” type of message? 

Double that for the women who decide that a man is not important enough to marry, in order to have a child.  That’s worse...that state of being is not unlike elephant herds in Africa, where the females and young wander around the savannah, and the males are alone or in young adult herds.  Same for chimpanzees, where gangs of young male chimps rush around and terrorize other chimps, and other animals, for that manner.  To function in our society, and have the greatest chance of properly learning and following the needed social patterns and mores, we need to have the proper role models. 

Am I saying that there are no people from single-parent households that function and succeed in our society?  Of course not.  However, what I am saying is that it isn’t a great leap of common sense to see that the disruption of the two-parent family unit has something to do with the problems we have in our society. 

What is the point?  Well....

The point is that a lot of our social ills can be traced back to the “60’s Revolution”. 

WHAT? 

Look at the suicide rates, the divorce rates, and the single-parent family rate.  The vast increases in these indicies between 1960 and 1980 cannot be ignored.  Why would these things increase? What was the cause? 

Modern-day leftist liberalism was born in that time, and the bitterness it stokes in the people that decide to follow that thought process was created then as well.  Look....when you take God out of the public discourse, when you start working on seeing what is wrong with America, as opposed to what is right, and when you start looking for the government (be it ours or the UN) to solve the huge problems that blanket the world, you are inherently setting a negative process in order. 

It is no wonder why people are so damned bitter about Bush winning the election....they have no hope.  There is no positive thing they could see in federalism, success in Iraq, and the utter futility of the UN.  It is the leftists that tell people to look to satiating their urges, and forgetting conscience, and that is the central ideal of the 68-74 period, was it not? 

If it’s all about me, and I believe that my goal must be to make myself happy, then I automatically view everything that I do that involves other people through that litmus.  If I’m not happy in my marriage, then screw it!  If I’m not happy with men, I can have a kid on my own.  If I want to blow my load in the White House...well, hey, it feels good, so I’ll do it! 

If my life isn’t making me happy, and my thought process isn’t making it better, than I quit.  That’s the ultimate form of self-centeredness, in my opinion. 

What is the root cause of divorce?  It’s not escape from a harmful situation, even though that happens....it’s because one or the other doesn’t feel personally fulfilled in some way....sex, money, lifestyle....whatever.  That’s selfish, and harmful, both to the participants, and the children involved. 

A woman having a child out of wedlock ON PURPOSE is not thinking of the child as much as she is thinking of satiating her own need for a child.  “I want a child.” What is that all about?  Add to that the fact that this woman, who has decided that she wants a child (much like someone wants a new car, or plastic surgery), is far more apt to support abortion-on-demand for those who DON’T want a child, even though they want to screw someone. 

Well, sorry, people.  There are these things called “CONSEQUENCES”, they follow actions, and they can be good or bad. 

OK...rant over.  Another beer…