cognitorex

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In search of Papal logic.

One of the Catholic Church's Papal-blessed apologia denial statements was that the incident of abuse by Priests was statistically the same as the greater population.
The Doctrine of In phallus ability?

(cognitorex, away, away beyond the shore, for a week)

Peace to all!

Labels: Fallibility, Papal logic, whoo-ee Sister Marie, World Peace

If a high scion,
Takes up flyin(g)
Surreptitiously avoiding a war.

That’s not news now,
Nor some big wow,
In glorious times of yore.

But to don clothes,
as our Rambo
A warrior, all Honest and True.

Seems de and con ceitful,
Something perhaps,
One should big time oughta eschew!

February 17, 2004

I am flying coop for a week: will charge up batteries and return November 4.

Labels: but God told me, clothing for incompetents, dressup President

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Below is my take on Steve's Benen's (Carpetbagger 10.24.07) report that the White House eviscerated the draft of Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, prior to her testifying before a Senate panel yesterday on the impact of climate change on public health. References to potential health risks were removed; one CDC official said, and details on how many people might be adversely affected because of global warming were deleted.

Labels: apparatchik, commissariat, science eviscerated, soviet

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--letting the cat out of the bag--

If you listen to John Burns publicly speak, his bird's nest hairdo dominating the visual, you arrive at the conclusion that to him history's best friend, unemotional time, will say that America did what the world needed and placed it's military boots in the Middle East.
When I heard him, he disclosed in his speech that his Dad was a NATO Officer, a uniformed political operative so to speak. He humorously alluded that perhaps it wasn't best to disclose to the audience that he came from a military-solution background because it hung in the air that his "meddle-away-America" conclusions seemed to derive, slantedly, from his personal background.
He, however, may well be spot on with his political historical conclusions. "Time" will tell.
But, perhaps his bias towards the acceptability of invading the brown oil rich hordes had more to do with his admission that the Brits as a nation as well as the dons of Oxford and Cambridge, whilst Mister Burns was youthfully entering the halls of higher learning, had not yet become aware that the days of Empire were actually finished.

Notes from John Burns' speech, Williams College, MA, Sept.'07

Labels: baghdad, Days of Empire, Iraq, John Burns, New York Times

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Now that the founding families of many of America's leading corporations no long have or exercise control over the management, 'Embezzlement by Salary' is standard fare. This is one area in which both Adam Smith and Lenin could easily agree.

Labels: CEO embezzlement, ceo salaries

George has a new op-ed, A Lexus in Every Garage, bemoaning the lack of sympathy for how hard it is to stand out from the crowd when so much wealth abounds. ..My take is further down concerning all the commenters who knee jerk hurl abuse on Mr. George when there exists a teensy possibility that 'softer' might be better for this particular piece. If pols and their warrior enablers should be held to caution before they hurl invective against twelve year old children perhaps some leeway for the aged would also be in order.

Relax for a second. Give George Will his due. He has reached out and written a playful tongue in cheek piece. Hey, intuitively he has to be right. It must be a royal pain to be rich and see so many others sporting the same clothes, hardwear, jewelry and luxury accouterments. Thirty years ago my then wife opined in Spanish that Louis Vuitton was 'muy vista', (very seen' or old hat.)

Also, years ago I heard this Wall Street story.

A young trader from the ranks of the mega bonus class overhears his compadres discussing how their wives have been enjoying shopping their bonuses on Baccarat crystal.
What is bac-a-rah he says. They disdainfully inform him of the existence of the elite luxury crystal brand.
He immediately jumps on the horn, as they used to say back then, pre cell phone you know, calls his wife and instructs her to post haste go get some Bac-a-rah, Bee A Cee Cee A R A Tee glasses, and yah a decanter too!

Labels: be kind to elders, soak the rich, there but for the grace of God

Mary Poppins has a take on relative values of this White House.

Dim wittery, dim wittery, dim wit do doo
Feed Fox news propaganda,
that's simply not new.

Dim wittery, dim wittery, dim wit do doo
If burning security serves politics,
Then that's what we'll do.

Let's see. Fifteen of the 911 terrorists were Saudi, an Egyptian, Lebanese and two UAE. So, destroy Iraq. dim wit do doo. Burn Valerie and disclose a huge U.K. terror investigation while it's in progress. Dim wittery do doo.

In the Bush White House where politics trumps truth in all respects including science, economics and medicine, burning a non GOP controlled security asset is like someone picking their nose. It's considered gross but the 'picker' isn't even aware of what they're doing. Thus spoken, operatives feeding the amoral Bush Cheney propaganda machine wouldn't even recognize that wrong was being perpetrated.

To coin a phrase. For these mutts, "All security is political."

Labels: Burning security assets, Bush, Plame, propaganda, Wilson

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Iraqi discussions below, but definitely not conclusions, are copied from Washington Monthly blog.

Iraqi leaders argue that sectarian animosity is entrenched in the structure of their government. Instead of reconciliation, they now stress alternative and perhaps more attainable goals: streamlining the government bureaucracy, placing experienced technocrats in positions of authority and improving the dismal record of providing basic services.

"I don't think there is something called reconciliation, and there will be no reconciliation as such," said Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, a Kurd. "To me, it is a very inaccurate term. This is a struggle about power."

Humam Hamoudi, a prominent Shiite cleric and parliament member, said any future reconciliation would emerge naturally from an efficient, fair government, not through short-term political engineering among Sunnis and Shiites.

Such as it is, I interpret from the Iraqis, in the above discussions, that they in a gestalt manner have declared that a government exists.

If you can noodle what gestalt means and apply a little logic here a consensus government now exists in Iraq.

One clarion hint is that all of the squabbling Iraqi interests have now pretty much agreed on the defining elements of the problem. Unity in defining the problem was a necessary milestone which is finally allowing prospective solutions from a 'government' to be aired or implemented. Lo that it took four years and all the dimwittery of Bushco but kicking five million Sunnis down the steps and considering strategies to invite them to return does take a while.

Does this gestalt of a government make a difference. I hate to tell you.

As the idea that a gestaltian Iraqi government has formed progresses from intellectual argument to recognizing that demonstrable progress toward Iraqi peace is inevitable the GOP and Bush favorables are going to go up.

Somebody, or everybody, in the Democrat camp had better plan on ideas, opinions and strategies that include winning in '08 with the situation in Iraq markedly improving.

(Co-opt the GOP, give credit to Murtha and the Democratic Party's relentless drive to bring the troops home if nothing else comes to mind.)

Gestalt: -A physical or symbolic configuration, pattern, or organized field having specific properties that cannot be derived from the summation of its component parts; a unified whole.

Labels: Bush uptick possible, election strategy needed, Iraq government appears

Open the site for the U.S. Department of Peace or the Peace Alliance site (http://www.thepeacealliance.org/). There are forty cosponsors working to enact a Department of Peace bill in the works.
Organizers need a Senate sponsor and are working to bring out Ted Kennedy to sponsor this bill in the Senate.
Check out the site. See who is sponsoring the bill.
See what your representative thinks or is doing.

The Mission Statement
Every corporation or enterprise seeking success in their core endeavors is absolutely advised to have a cogent workable "Mission Statement" with which to focus the enterprise and its workers on a common goal. A desire for Americans to live secure in their homes through a long term plan to actualize planet wide peace by means other than force of arms should be integral to America's goals.
Establishing a Cabinet level position to enshrine and thus execute this Mission Statement is a simple commonsense act signaling that America is committed via both human and material resources to bringing life, liberty and justice truly to all.

Labels: Deprtment of Peace, Kennedy, Mission Statement, Peace Alliance

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There are four basic sexes and accommodations and conventions applicable thereto. There are men who are physically attracted to women, men who are physically attracted to men and women vice-versa.
The Republican party rules are quite clear. You can serve your country in the military if you are a male attracted to males or female attracted to females as long as you keep your sexual orientation secret and particularly do not discomfort your heterosexual comrades in arms.
If a G.I. were to roll over in his bunk on a warm summer's eve and make a clear request by voice or by body signals that he wished a fellow G.I. to join him in a sexual encounter he would by law have thus truncated his government career.
Public toilet decorum, by universally accepted convention, mandates don't ask, don't tap. Having some other gentleman address you while urinating with, "Hey, that's a nice Johnson you have there." clearly severs sexual oriented privacy, a verbal equivalent to Mr. Craig's toe tapping.
Mr. Craig, you tapped, you "told."
If you have found a gray area in the rules of toilet etiquette that allow you to discomfort your fellow citizenry; if you have a winning argument overriding the Republican fiat that holding a government office or military position is closed to those who 'tap', 'tell' or reveal that are sexually attracted to their same sex, then I wish to hear your rationale.
Furthermore, I appreciate that your cosmic level hypocrisy helps send the myth of the GOP being the family values party to the crapper. This an election boon of wonderful proportions. Yet, please consider, for our gay troops and others, that if in your heart you know full well that you can serve your state and country despite your 'tapping' that your previous stance on gay issues may have been in error.

Labels: don't ask, don't tell, family values comes a crapper, gay rights, gays in military, hypocrisy, Larry Craig