"There have been approximately 7,200 rockets (Grads, Qassams) and mortars launched at Israel since 2005", according to IDFSpokesperson.com.  There are more stats at the link, but let that one sink in for a moment (especially after reading this headline).

Now consider that when Israel finally defends itself, and launches a counter-attack, with the goal, not of revenge, not of tit-for-tat, but to stop the attacks aimed at it’s civilians by targeting Hamas’ military, then and only then does the "anti-war" Left spring into action.  I really must put "anti-war" in scare quotes because, as much as their rhetoric is anti-all-war, they only get their dander up when their particular political ox is being gored.  They dredge up their celebrities, who have been chirping with the crickets for years regarding Hamas’ continual barrage, and get them to feign outrage for the media.

Israel made the extremely difficult decision to evict its own people out of their homes to make Gaza available to the Palestinians.  But with respect to international relations, the only thing that did was give Hamas a closer base of operations to fire rockets into southern Israel.  And as this short video production notes, distance is only a matter of time.  Unless Hamas’ ability to launch is severely curtailed or stopped, major population centers are on their list. 

But nary a word from the "anti-war" Left, hardly a bare nod to what Hamas terrorists have been inflicting on Israel for years.  There’s a word for this: Disingenuous. 

I’d like to re-link something that Mark O. noted before.  This post at Chicago Boyz notes that terrorism, historically, cannot be negotiated with.  Any concessions simply bolster their cause for more terrorism.  Israel, after decades of pressure, gave up land for peace.  They did the former, but they never got the latter.  And if all they do is make concessions, they never will.  (Remember this when discussing "root causes" of 9/11, by the way.)

I’ll leave you with this post from Yourish.com; 15 New Commandments for gradual self-destruction.  See what the liberal mindset hath wrought.  (And bookmark "yourish.com".  Their analysis of the media coverage of the Gaza war has been fantastic.)

• Tonight, blessing of waters in our varied Orthodox liturgical year.
• Hmmm.
• Alternatives to public education.
• Example one. Example two. Example three. Media bias?
• Of language not fair but foul.
• Good news for the type one crowd, perhaps.
• D’oh.
• Considering a game.
• Number and game. Further reading can be found in this book, The Book of Numbers.
• Balance is key.
• Verse.
• Numbers and blood.
• A Saint recalled.
• Worry.
• Yield.
• A death noted. I’ve read Dortmunder stories and enjoyed them, but did not know he wrote under the pseudonym Stark.
• And old great church.
• That’s a good idea.
• Gosh, ya think?
• Some books.
• Ducted windmills?
• Ethics and the law?

With regarding the current financial crises has the following connection been made anywhere?

• Many American’s operate close to the edge of their liquidity, spending money on “things” at about the same rate it comes in.
• Gas prices doubled in a short period of time, coming to a maximum shortly before the crises.
• Our economy is called rightly petroleum based.
• Our behavior didn’t markedly change quickly when prices doubled.
• Then the credit markets collapsed.

It is hard to adjust habits, spending and activities rapidly to match rapidly fluctuating commodity prices. When that commodity is oil, which is so fundemental to every one of our activities. That could spell trouble.

Is it too simplistic to account for the current market problems to the inability of that same market to adjust quickly to fluctuations in cost of its fundamental commodity? If not, why isn’t this being noted? Or more to the point, what’s wrong with my logic above? And if it isn’t wrong, who else is suggesting it.

Tucked somewhere inbetween making tamales and lighting each of the 5 candles of Advent, watching the movie It’s a Wonderful Life has become sort of a family tradition for us. Call me sentimental, but I firmly believe the film to be a masterpiece of cinematic story-telling.

Greg Koukl, at Stand to Reason, recently pointed out an op-ed by Andrew Klavan, written in 2003, in which Klavan extolls the virtues of both Scrooge (1951) and It’s a Wonderful Life. He writes,

In “Scrooge,” a man grown rich because of heart-shriveling greed is forced by spirits to view the consequences of his existence.

In “It’s a Wonderful Life,” George Bailey, a man in financial trouble because of his large-souled generosity, is forced by an angel to view the consequences of his non-existence: what would’ve happened if he’d never been born.

On both sides of the mirror, the results are the same: a revolutionary personal transformation, what the New Testament calls “metanoia,” which is often translated as “repentance” but which means literally “a change of mind.”

After the metanoia, there’s a lot of Christmas caroling and happiness and that sort of thing. Thus movie critics – who frequently confuse darkness with depth – sometimes belittle these films as sentimental.

They’re wrong. Watched carefully, the films are disturbingly realistic. Because, for each protagonist, the change in outlook has absolutely nothing to do with a change in circumstance. They aren’t singing carols and so forth because they’ve won the girl or beaten the villain or made millions or righted wrongs. Scrooge can never bring justice to the people he’s ruined, and Bailey will never become the world-traveling architect he wanted to be.

As we enter the new year, we would do well to consider whether or not our outlook for the future is driven by our circumstances or by our will.

Happy New Year.

• Holiday lighting.
• Some history … “for the kings and princes of Europe the Mohammedans were an alien culture, and not well understood.” Unlike today where they are … soooo familiar. The more things change, the more they remain the same?
• Keep praying for David … an update on his status.
• Congolese massacre.
• Wanna live longer? Be hungry all the time … with the added benefit of course that your longer life will seem longer too.
• A conversation on porn.
• Pointing out an essential difficulty with a Greenwaldian talking point.
• Retiree!? Yah, right. I much prefer, “domestic goddess” for the at-home mom.
• Mr Obama as Magic Negro from the left.
• A followup article to the Africa/Christianity one.
• Hoofing around Munchen.
• Groceries in Malaysia.
• Hmmm.
• A wine bottle trick.
• Khyber pass news.
• I concur.
• Just suffer more?

The world has long awaited and long needed, a final realistic solution to the Palestinian/Israeli Middle East problem. And at long last, I’ll offer it to y’all for free. Just because … I’m that kind of guy.

The problem itself goes back some years, generations in fact. To the creation of Israel. The UN in either its folly or its evil intent, depending on your point of view on that matter, created this whole disaster by its intentional act. In the movement of Israel to a free Jewish state they moved the Palestinians out. Where? Into “permanent refugee camps”. Now in the rest of the world, and in saner moments of reflection, it will occur to any rational observer that the words “permanent” and “refugee camp” should not be connected in any way shape or form. Refugee camps, well suck just a little less than the terror of war, famine, or other disaster from which the refugee is fleeing. The slogan might be, “refugee camps, where life sucks just a little less than being dead.” The purpose of such camps is to either wait the short time until the disaster has passed to return home, or in case of civil war and the possibilities of return are not realistic … a place to survive until one can make oneself a way to find a home elsewhere.

Well, guess what. The time for waiting for Israel to be returned to the Palestinian people has passed its time. It’s well overripe. The refugees need to find a home … outside of that refugee camp. The time for the Palestinian diaspora is now. These people need to be integrated into society. Those people need to be bussed out of those camps, split up, separated and integrated into legal stable societies all over the world. They need jobs, they need a quiet surrounding filled with law abiding people to raise their children in, they a fresh start.

Decades ago if not sooner.

(one final remark, note the title, “A Modest Proposal” … you all know what that means right?)

I hear there are courses offered at B-school on this topic. This is odd, or a unfortunate sign of the times at best.

Business ethics are trivial. Two rules only.

1. Don’t lie.
2. Don’t steal.

Uhm, what isn’t covered in those two simple rules in the world of commerce? Why are there courses to teach how to do that?

• A journey to Christianity.
• On saving it.
• Really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
• Not a dog.
• That Karamazov yarn examined.
• Reason and opposition, abortion and SSM.
• This week’s feast, coin in bread.
• The missing character in Valkyrie.
• Some thoughts from the right on the Magic Negro song.
• Yech.
• The fly in the Obama financial rescue ointment. More here.
• Hmm.
• Considering Culture, i.e., Ian Banks “Culture” civilization.
• Depressing for him, opportunity for the rest of us.
• Killing, sans song … perhaps softly.
• Brain booster.

Mr Schraub gets it very wrong, and I think on this point, he is not alone in this on the left. He (and others) love to jump on the property/marriage allusion. One wonders if that is a prime example of, to coin a word, a Vizzinism? (From, of course, the Princess Bride where Vizzini keeps coining the Dread Pirates advance as “inconceivable” and Inigo Montoya’s rejoinder is “You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.”)  But enough lexical silliness. To the point, Mr Schraub offers:

Property, in its simplest form, is that to which you have the right to exclusive use (and can correspondingly exclude others from). In a very real sense, that’s precisely what a closed relationship is: a mutual grant of exclusivity, reducing at least one element of another’s personhood to the level of property.

and connects that to notions about:

A lot of bloggers have taken apart the risible Dennis Prager’s sex advice column, in which he advises married women that they should have sex with their husbands even when they don’t want to.

So, what have we here simply put is that Mr Schraub connects the idea that the notion that a spouse might be advised to consent to sex when “they don’t want to” equates that same said spouse with property.

Property? No. No. And No. Let’s examine how this is in error. I should note, that I’m not arguing an anthropological point that no societies have treated their spouse as property. However, Mr Schraub is alluding in part to Jewish and Christian notions as suggested by his allusion to Mr Prager, which indeed I will argue these traditions support such notions as that which Mr Prager suggesting regarding sexual relations disregarding your personal desire at that time without any requirement or delving into notions of spouse as property, which is an assumption it seems that those on the left are amazingly quick to leap. Read the rest of this entry »

• Unable to sustain faith (in science infected with money interests). One wonders if global warming and the money/science/faith connection with occur more globally.
• Hotels and Internet. It’s my experience (globally) that the high end and low end hotels all charge for internet. Judging from the Internet price, I’d guess SPH considers itself “high end” and charges accordingly like its peers.
• A book for youth (and perhaps more) recommended. Twelve more here.
• The former premier atheist remembered.
• The view from the entitlement wing.
• Home servers?
• Directly connecting media and Palin vs Kennedy. This connects to that as well.
• Straight to a girls heart, genus genius of course.
• QoD links. (that’d be mostly evolutionary biology)
• A deontological response.
• An atheist disagrees fundamentally with Dawkins.
• Hunting … Elmer?
• Heh.
• So, now we all know.
• I saw many of his works displayed in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg this summer and I agree they are very striking.
• Saint Lucia remembered.
• Crime and punishment?
• Where the green global warming fans (fanatics) are leading us, to solutions that just don’t work?
• Christ hidden in Talmud?

A question that struck me regarding the Rick Warren flap.

I’ve been paying attention to Presidential races and elections since 1972 … and voted in every election since 1980, which makes for some 6 to 8 Presidential elections … and that’s what a good half dozen swearing in ceremonies. And I’ve never ever watched one or had the slightest interest in paying them any mind or thought that watching, much less attending, was a “thing to do.”

So no matter what you think about Mr Obama’s choice of Rev. Warren, why do you think this matters? And for that matter, have you yourself ever watched a swearing in or felt it a thing “to do?” If so, why?

It’s typical of periodical media of many types, news, sports, special interests at this time of year to do year end reviews and so on. Last year I suggested some books which I thought most affected or influenced my thinking and ideas in the prior year. As a reminder the two books, which I still very highly recommend from last year were Stephen Collier’s The Bottom Billion (note: now in paperback) and Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age.

• For the first book, an interesting approach to the theodicy problem in The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? This book frames the problem and stresses that there aren’t “trivial” answers locates the best solution (and framing of the problem) in the literature as being found in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov which … I also finished reading this year at long last. And which, now having found the suggestion that this book, among other things, is “about” theodicy I will start to re-read. This book too, I glanced at but will return to when I return to the latter book here Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction.
• For my second book, I’m going to have to go with The Princeton Companion to Mathematics, which I highly recommend to anyone who likes