Jim Rittenhouse's semidaily journal of news, commentary and reports
Take a look at the gravestone to the right; that’s from one of my family members; translated from the German, it reads “Born in the year 1736: Heinrich Rittenhouse…” and trails off into the grass. Wikipedia’s entry on the Mennonite church / movement notes: Persecution and the search for employment forced Mennonites out of the [...]
Is the controversy over building a mosque near ground zero a grand distraction or a grand opportunity? Or is it, once again, grandiose demagoguery? It has been said, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” Are we not overly preoccupied with this controversy, now being used in various ways by grandstanding politicians? It looks to me like [...]
America is not a “Christian” nation in the way we think of “Muslim” nations. If it were, birth certificates would automatically indicate “Christian” as the “faith of birth.” It would be illegal to convert to another faith. Jews, Native American religions, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Mormons and atheists would be unwelcome. They would need to practice [...]
“When we think of Islam we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. Billions of people find comfort and solace and peace. And that’s made brothers and sisters out of every race — out of every race. America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make [...]
http://www.newsweek.com/id/225492/page/1 The Power of Two: http://www.newsweek.com/id/225098 Photo gallery of the kids, etc. The Intro picture is particularly stunning. This has been in the works since spring. Newsweek came in with a Pulitzer-award winning photographer who was fresh from covering the White House and Obama and Bush to do the shots. The interviews mostly were around [...]
…from Think Progress. Give it a look for a summary of why it’s major bad news, if you didn’t know that already…unless you think you’re Jack Bauer or something. As Jesse Ventura said on The View: “If waterboarding is OK, why don’t we let our police do it to suspects so they can learn what [...]
Daniel Larison, the thinking man’s conservative pundit: So, ironically, some of the defenders of the torture regime are making the best argument for the prosecution of past administration officials by their own invocations of past government illegalities. They are unwittingly reminding us that crimes unpunished today can easily become tomorrow’s conventionally accepted “correct” decisions. Every [...]
Another note on torture issues. This post seems to put it all together that the prime people who got good, reliable information in World War 2 were people who followed the same gold standard we followed before George W Bush changed things around; that torture is only good for causing people to suffer and say [...]
…which is the Organization of American States’ irregular meeting of the leadership of the OAS states (34) countries). Interesting news coming out of it, of course. Discussions between Obama and the US delegation on the one side, and some people Bush would never deal with on the other…discussions with the Cubans and Venezuelans and so [...]
I don’t take IQ tests. I’m not worried about people wondering about my intelligence. I also *know* the limits of my intelligence and abilities. To me, endlessly taking fathead online tests drawn up by idiots who really don’t know squat is a total waste of my time, and when it also involves me linking up [...]
Daniel Larison: The way to tell an ideologue from a realist, and the reason realists are not simply ideologues posing as something else, is that the ideologue will persist in a course of action long after it has failed and long after everyone knows it has failed because he thinks that his “values” demand it. [...]
During all of the thrash over the refinancing, it was interesting to revisit the ‘value’ of the house in the market: The start of the graph was when we bought it, and the present is the end of the graph; the assessed value (according to the lender) is slightly under that point. Which means that [...]
….because I sure have. Not for a while, though. Thank goodness – I’ve been out of school for over 25 years.
A poster on Facebook was mentioning about missing their mom; I think I miss her (mine) the most at about 10:30 Central Time at night on my birthday, when I would get a call from her wishing me a happy birthday at the time I was born…(about 11:30 Eastern Time, back in Ohio). I really [...]
On a personal basis, over the last few years due to the Magic Of The Internet, I’ve become re-knowledgeable about the activities of people I hadn’t heard from in a LONG time. This has very much been a good thing from several standpoints: one gets to hear The Rest Of the Story, so to speak, [...]