The Thomas Chronicles

After hearing the deluge that was the news this week, I am almost overwhelmed by events. Almost. What I found most disturbing about this week is our lackadaisical mood concerning earth-shattering events. Most of the mainstream media and the blogosphere seems to be moving from inertia rather than any drive to engage in the sphere of public opinion.

The pace of events a had serious uptick this week. Allow me to recount them:

• President Ford died.

• Bob Woodward returns to true Watergate form, dishonoring Ford by twisting Ford’s words artfully to make him say what Woodward wanted him to say. Funny, isn’t it? Woodward, with Hilary Clinton’s help, arrives at superstar fame with the Leftists by ousting Richard Nixon from office (thus, causing the fall of Saigon, the Communist invasion of 20 or 30 odd countries around the world, US embassies burning around the world, etc, etc… All the fruits of a coup in the Presidency. Nixon was forced to resign for not disclosing what he knew and when he knew it about the Watergate break-in — the circumstances of which involved a man who tried to avoid being blackmailed by someone who had pictures of adulterous wife. Of course, when Clinton perjured himself over 30 times about actually committing adultery, he was given a pass. “What IS is?” But that’s another story.) which gave Gerald Ford the Presidency. 40-something odd years later, he uses Ford to hammer a sitting President. Perhaps he could gain the Leftists’ favor once again. Perhaps not. The bold print was done by me for emphasis.

• Ford said:
• “And now, I’ve never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do.”
• “Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction.”
• … “I don’t think I would have gone to war” … “I don’t think, if I had been president, on the basis of the facts as I saw them publicly,” he said, “I don’t think I would have ordered the Iraq war. I would have maximized our effort through sanctions, through restrictions, whatever, to find another answer.”

• Woodward wrote:
• “Former president Gerald R. Ford said in an embargoed interview in July 2004 that the Iraq war was not justified.” [Note: Ford said he disagreed the President Bush’s emphasis for going to war, not that the war was “not justified”.]
• “Ford had faced his own military crisis — not a war he started like Bush, but one he had to figure out how to end.” [Note: I’m sure Bush would have swamped into the Mideast even if 9/11 didn’t kill three thousand Americans, right?… Oh, and I think Woodward doesn’t give himself enough credit. He really helped in giving Ford that “military crisis”.]

• To summarize, while President Ford disagreed with President Bush on his foreign policy, that he would not have gone to war but would have squeezed Iraq in another way, this does not mean that he is anti-war. Indeed, when it comes down to it, he said that America should go to war only when it suits our national interests rather than for the idealism to freeing people. He said, “And I just don’t think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security.” Personally, I agree with him. Woodward tried to paint President Ford, the man who ordered the bombing of all of Cambodia because of the Mayaguez incident, as an anti-war spokesman. It’s not often reported that Ford bombed every government building, every military target, and every bamboo stick strung together to make a bridge across a mud gutter. Ford ordered the destruction of Cambodia’s infrastructure to demonstrate a point to the Communists and the world, that our route in Vietnam does not mean we’re retreating from the world. To say Ford is an anti-war advocate is just inane.

• Colorado is an icebox.

• Saddam Hussein was sentenced and executed (by hanging no less) in less than a week.

• An enormous glacier breaks free from Canada. It’s a bit larger than Manhattan with an area of 66km² and could move westward when the ice around it melts for the summer. Manhattan is only a measly 61km².

• Our Democratic leaders are swinging around the world to josh with our enemies. (They could be doing it at our government’s behest for all I know, but it’s disturbing nonetheless…)

• It’s confirmed and nailed down that Sandy Berger, Clinton’s former National Security Advisor, stole top secret SCI documents and destroyed them. Those documents would have proven either Clinton did everything he could to halt the path of terrorists to our shores or proven him as being almost criminally negligent on this point. Who knows? It’s gone now. In any case, Sandy Berger gets a slap on the wrist and gets a “$50,000 fine, 100 hours of community service and a three-year bar from accessing classified material.” Anyone who signed the Morrision Directives and is below a particular pay-grad gets 30 years in Levenworth for doing the same thing. Class has its privileges, I guess.

• Bush signed into law to build a fence across the US-Mexican border, and allocated 1.2 billion dollars for this purpose. What this really means in real dollar terms remains to be seen. Is it enough to pay for all the border patrol agents, the high-tech detection devices, etc.? We know what Mexico thinks of all this. And they’re very loud about it too. (How dare you prevent me from stealing what I want?! Your jobs, your entire Southwest belong to ME!) Um… right…

• Bush is ordering National Guard units active as part of his plan to win in Iraq. He plans to surge the number of troops to clench the war.

• Somalia’s transitional government, backed by Ethiopia’s army, have retaken Mogadishu. Ethiopia’s troops, unconstrained by civilian casualties, virtually rolled back the Islamic tide. A showdown in southern Somalia is expected at any time.

Anyone just skimming the headlines of newspapers on their walk to work could have gathered these facts, which is not to say this is all there is to it. I would be three hours reading and still won’t perforate the surface of all that’s occurring. In this recounting, I’m leaving out the thousands of just mind-twisting random acts of violence that seem to have erupted out of nowhere. It feels like a madness is rapidly taking over the world and the people in it.

May the Lord stand between me and this spirit of madness…

Brace for impact, ya’ll. I don’t think we’ve seen anything yet.

Related Posts:

Gay Patriot:In Memoriam Gerald R. Ford,Gerald Ford And Gays: The Unknown Story
Captain’s Quarters: Don’t call Hitchens for my Euolgy
Atlas Shrugs: Gerald Ford, RIP: If Only he beat Carter

And yet another year passes…

Perhaps it’s just me, but I’m getting nostalgic for time not so long ago when a year felt like a year. It doesn’t anymore. Back then when New Year’s Eve rolled around, we could look behind us and feel the weight of an entire year borne on the back of our memories. A year now feels more like a month or a couple of months. And months like days.

We wake up, brush our teeth, take our warm drowsy showers, and work for eight hours to the sound of tap-tapping on our keyboards. Then, we wake one uneventful morning, fall mindlessly into our now robotic routines and realize that yet another year had gone by. And here we thought it was just Monday. Hardly anything to be excited about.

We shrug at our reflection, not bothering to take the foamed toothbrush out of our drooling mouths.

Brush… brush, brush… Scrape, scrape… RINSE!

Replace the light bulb. Take out the garbage. Remember to eat fruits and salads. Good digestion makes you so much more pleasant.

We scroll these reminders in our heads with practiced erudition. What’s that?

Before us sits eight or twenty different Japanese cars waiting as though for meal tickets. Red light. The morning rock talkshow personality (we’re all personalities nowadays, aren’t we?) shouts it’s a new year. We should celebrate. Toast. Brush up our memories for the words to Auld Langsyne. He spits out his words like abrasive elbows or perhaps like sandpaper to file down our wills to his wisdom. He has a throaty sort of voice, the kind that resonates like having pebbles ejected down a long plastic tube. He is cheerful, laughing at just the right moments. Let’s see — no terrorist attacks, stocks stable, 2 inches of rainfall in the Great Plains last week.

The Board is Green. Go.

We arrive at work and stare a electrons all day. We watch a square box where bouncing electrons tell us what someone else said and calls itself an email. We do it for four hours, eat an unsatisfying lunch, watch the square black box for another four hours (Was 1984 really over twenty years ago? How did that happen?).

Then we go home and debate for hours how to satiate our palates. A restaurant? How ’bout something spicy? We devour the slop on our plate, perhaps pop an anti-depressant or four or eight, drown in mindless shouting TV shows, and drift to sleep listening to Chuck Norris and Christie Brinkley sell exercise machines that’ll probably end up somewhere in the garage if bought.

Then the year’s over. We wanted to have a good time and go out with friends. Perhaps even throw confetti and watch the fireworks exploding every year down at the pier or downtown.

But it’s only Monday and time passes so quickly nowadays. Tomorrow will be another year. And perhaps a month later, who knows? We just might be present for a meaningful conversation, a good laugh… maybe even have time to throw tufts of confetti.

Other Thoughts to ring in the New Year:

Atlas Shrugs: Have a Wicked New Year!
BlackFive: Happy New Year!
Anne Coulter: Kwanzaa: Holiday From the FBI
La Shawn Barber: Happy New Year!!!

Update 1/1/2007:

Some people reading my New Year’s post thought it sounded pretty dour. Well, I must admit it is a somber post. When writing it, somewhere along the way, I took on the persona of what I thought to be a sizable portion of the American people. With studies showing that Americans are growing lonelier, malignant narcissism having an exponential rise, and with our Lord warning us that the love will grow cold in the hearts of men, I think we are sailing into the end of the age. At what point in that progression, who knows? It might still be 50 years off or more.

There is yet so many things to be grateful for, so much beauty, love, and laughter here when it is still day. May our Lord Jesus grant America full Christian revival, victory, and renaissance!

To the confounding of our enemies and the continued prosperity of the United States of America! Happy New Year!

As President Bush decides whether or not mass more troops in Iraq, one thing is clear. We need to expand the military, not make it smaller. In the post-Cold War era, many high level policymakers for our military during the Clinton and Bush presidencies made a major blunder in thinking that we needed to reconstitute our force structure into a smaller, lighter force that would specialize in rapid deployment.

The reasoning behind this assumes that a) large-scale wars are a thing of the past and b) that no one would go through the ruinous expense of challenging our military superiority. Had these assumptions been true, then, in effect, these rapid deployment forces would make a lot of sense. Would would be left with only “policing actions” and “peace-keeping” missions.

However, it seems we are becoming painfully aware that these assumptions were just plain wrong.

In looking at the 1990’s from hindsight, when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin Wall crumbled under the weight of thousands of picks and axes, we apparently thought we had finally shut down the war cycle.

Peace will reign.

Goodwill and prosperity will overflow and runneth over.

Then, like a series of sucker punches, we awoke. Then the jarring horror of 9/11. Then, when we surveyed our “friends” and “allies” for assurance and support, we found the world had changed into something we no longer knew. Then, we went war; first in Afghanistan, then Iraq. We surged into 200 plus countries to confront terrorists in myriad levels of operations.

I can go on ad nauseum at all the shocks the United States have undergone since the beginning of the millenium (Frankly, I am surprised we are in as good a shape as we are currently in.)

Some conservatives worry over the eroded support for the war in Iraq, and I confess I share their worry. But this is not the only cause for concern. The world taken as a whole has become a very perilous place for America. Allow me to outline just the barest sketch of what we will face in the next 5 to 10 years:

• Chinese Military Build Up. China has been conducting a military build-up for the past 20 years with their sole aim as challenging the United States in the Western Pacific. As the United States had inadvertantly become hegemon of the world, so China is determined at being the hegemon of Asia. In this goal, they are attempting to challenge us on land, sea and air, especially the latter two. Early this year, the Chinese fielded their first Aegis destroyer. I don’t know how they stole our technocracy to build these ships, but that’s now irrelevant. They have also signed treaties with Russia for the exchange of high-tech weaponry and created the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an organization whose purpose remains shrouded in secrecy.

• A Totalitarian Russia. Early this year, Russia revealed their hand when they threatened to withhold natural gas to Europe. Under former Chancellor Gehart Schoeder’s urgings, Europe is now utterly at the mercy of Russia for natural gas, which heats a sizeable percentage of Europe’s population. Russia has also publicly announced that they will MIRV their warheads and devise ways to penetrate our Missile Defences with special ICBM’s that don’t operate from linear trajectories. The Russian government is also consolidating all natural resources onto itself, mirroring the old Soviet socialist economy.

• Iran. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been implacable in his desire to build nuclear weapons. He has dumbfounded the UN and the United States again and again. Iran is also undergoing a massive military build up, but this is not to rule the Mideast as many think. The radical Shiites, of which he is part, believes that the only way for the 5th and final Madhi to return to earth is by initiating an apocalypse. With his nuclear designs as he sits on or is next to around 60 percent of the world’s energy supply, he just might ignite the “Big One”.

• Eurabia or Fascist Europe (or both). All the talk about Europe nowadays presents only few options. None of them are good.The liberal social democracies are failing and falling fast from the onrush of militant Muslim immigrants and their own indiginious fascist resurgence. Europe’s demographic implosion is not just beginning but are already well-progressed. They’re into their third generation where a European is the only son of an only son of an only son. Should Europe go gently into the good night without a fight, all those lovely toys the Europeans have stored away for a rainy day will fall into the hands of the Jihadists.

• The Latin American Threat. I am not talking about illegal immigration, though it’s one component of the threat. Venezuela’s “President”, Hugo Chavez has repeatedly met with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Fidel Castro before he was hospitalized. Chavez, along with other extremist and anti-American groups, are becoming bolder in their hostility against the United States. Venezuela as well as Panama and others has allowed Chinese “advisors” to station themselves in their respective countries. FARC and drug cartels are slowly coming into alliance ever since the 1990’s. It is not difficult to imagine the devastation these groups can cause since they have the United States thoroughly penetrated via their drug trade and illegal immigrants.

All these threats I’ve just outlined are just the briefest of sketches about the threats swirling around the United States in the foreseeable future.

According to ABC News, President Bush is asking top military brass to figure out ways to increase the size of our Army and Marines.

“We have an obligation to ensure our military is capable of sustaining this war over the long haul and performing the many tasks that we ask of them,” he said.

“I’m inclined to believe that we need to increase in the permanent size of both the United States Army and the United States Marines.

“I’ve asked Secretary Gates to determine how such an increase could take place and report back to me as quickly as possible.”Now, in enacting changes to any bureaucracy, even the military, the optimum way of doing this is gradually. The haste implicit in President Bush’s statement suggests that we are planning this increase in force structure with more than just Iraq in mind. A troop surge in Iraq can serve to clench this war, but I don’t think this is the reason for this expansion of our military.

Although I would dearly love for us to return to the Cold War model of having the capacity to fight two and a half wars simultaneously, the haste in which this is requested is troubling. The ground is shaking over at the Pentagon, but out here in the comfortable civilian sector, we don’t know enough yet to feel the tremble.See Related Posts:

Captain’s Quarters: Do We Need a Bigger Military?
Wake Up America: Boots on the Ground in Iraq

This is the first day my blog is functional. Beginning in the morning some time last Friday, my server was hit with a Denial of Service cyber attack. This is what my web host had to say when I tried to find out just what in tar-nation is going on:

Box 52 was Under a major DDOS attack over the weekend from 6 million international IP’s we have had to stop large list of IP to keep the server running. The attack is over and we are allowing IPs in sets to prevent another major attack your site should be visible again over the next few hours.

Yes, Ladies and Gents, these cybernauts are Time Magazine’s People of the Year.

Call me cynical, but I’m not impressed.

Some bloggers dismissed Time Magazine’s populism as a mere “gimmick”. Other’s acknowledged the gimmick, but rolled with it anyway. And even though I enjoy reading La Shawn Barber’s blog, I will have to respectfully disagree with her almost unmitigated optimism on the “information reformation”. I think there are advantages as well as grave dangers in this new cyberworld of ours.

On La Shawn’s comment section of this post, I wrote:

To be honest, I am ambivalent to the “information reformation” despite the fact that I blog.

Yes, there is much more diversity in opinion. Yes, it hands the ability to mass communicate to just your average Joe. Yes, blogging can also pierce through some of the carefully orchestrated lies of the mainstream media.

All these positives are evidence that the monopoly of the MSM is loosening, and it is more difficult to concoct journalistic theatricals and present them as fact.

Or is it?

Along with this new diversified media comes a Greek chorus of the nonsensical and the blatantly false, standing to the side, fully dressed in their black garbs and wailing. Blogs and other online publishing platforms have so increased in number and scope that without a discerning eye or an extensive background in history or political science, a common passer-by surfing the wild seas of the net will have a lot of difficulty in deciphering what’s excrement and what’s not.

I think Peggy Noonan expressed this sentiment best in her Wall Street Journal Op-ed, “Media Anarchy Has Its Downside: We got freedom but lost standards”.

I cannot tell you how many people have come up to me excitedly telling me their newest discovery on the web. The conversation usually runs like this:

“Hey, man. I read somethin’ scandalous on the Internet yesterday.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“D’you know that the British crown still owns America? The reason why we get taxed so much is because we’re paying off the British crown! The United States is really still just another colony of the Brits!”

“Uh… Sir, where did you read this?”

“Off the net.”

“Oh.”

While blogging and online publishing can be very influential and serves the good of the public, the flip side of that coin is that this same medium can be the greatest promulgator of outright falsehoods and half-baked ideas. As Miss Noonan pointed out, there are no standards to veracity or integrity.

I think, what many a discerning blog-surfer would end up with is a list of a select few blogs managed by individuals (or groups) to whom they could give their trust. The rest would be relegated to curiosities and, for lack of a better word, digital fodder.

I don’t know if all of these unknowns warrant a place in this year’s “Person of the Year”. Even as I participate in this new medium, I am also trying to remain watchful at where all this is leading us.

Undiscovered countries, no doubt…

As Ayn Rand made clear in her novels and essays, you destroy the great by raising up the mediocre. While I think there are still great writers and thinkers of depth out there, most of them are buried under a mountain of mediocrity and inane incoherence.

For so much of the time we don’t exalt in the excellent. We castigate it.

We don’t waft the incipient flames of the intellect into a brilliant fire. We stamp it out.

We bring the level of conversation down to the lowest common denominator by flooding it with half-truths, superficial analysis, and popular thoughts expoused by the latest movie star, popstar or half-baked college professor… well, just about anyone who owns a computer.

If this is the criteria by which Time Magazine chooses the “Person of the Year”, then it’s utterly meaningless, and, moreover, it’s very patronizing. To my mind, there is nothing more insulting that giving undeserved praise that’s simultaneously meant to flatter and belittle.

See related posts:

The American Thinker: More on TIME’s Award to “You”
La Shawn Barber’s Corner: TIME Person of the Year: Me!
Atlas Shrugs: Time’s Non Starter
Michelle Malkin: Not everyone’s a winner
Jawa Report: Jawa Report Man/Men/Ladies of The Year.
Captain’s Quarters: A Limit To Media Bashing

Last month, MSNBC had an article titled, “Desk rage: Workers gone wild. Job stress fuels backstabbing, tirades, even assault“. I read this article is a sense of familiarity and outrage. It points to a growing trend of the corporate world where people are constantly on edge and on the brink of hysteria and hostility.

This is nothing new to me. I’ve worked in the corporate world for over three years and hysteria, screaming and backstabbing is “normal”.

Tirades? Yep.

Perfidy? Check.

Assault? Uh-huh.

The articles states:

Some desk-ragers “go postal,” screaming, cursing, trashing office equipment, even assaulting others. But desk rage also manifests as a slow boil that leads to gossiping at the water cooler, backstabbing, poor productivity, abusing sick days, stealing supplies or becoming irritable or depressed. Some people simply get fed up, stop communicating, put on a headset and emotionally “check out.”

Desk rage isn’t something companies like to publicize, so there are few statistics on it. But a 2001 survey of 1,305 workers, commissioned by Integra Realty Resources in New York City, found that 42 percent of respondents said there was yelling and other verbal abuse in their office, 23 percent said they have been driven to tears because of workplace stress and 10 percent said employees have actually resorted to physical violence.

To those who observe the behavior of people in today’s world, this should come as no surprise. Indeed, to me, the surprise of these numbers is that these behaviors aren’t more prevalent in our society. Considering the amount of stress that people are being subjected to on a daily basis, I half expected the number to be at least twenty percent more.

I suspect much of the stress is derived from new technologies and ease with which we can access information. These technologies can keep an employee fully integrated into the activities of their company 24/7. Without so much as raising a sweat, an employee can access all the information he needs all from the comfort of his home computer. It’s efficient. Cost effective.

What this also means is an employee is on call all the time.

Working 9 to 5 is out.

Working 24/7 is in.

How did we arrive at a place when a man is forced to working 50 to 70 hours a week and get paid for 40? Who made this decision? Did Congress pass a new law I didn’t hear about? Don’t people see the disparity between what they get paid and how much they work and what they are responsible for? Previous to now, a person who worked those kinds of hours - knocking himself out everyday and losing sleep - aimed to become vice president or CEO of a company. Now, a simple mailroom clerk is pulling down the same hours and is incurring the same amount of stress.

I know. I did it.

How we got here can be explained quite simply. What are we going to do to get ourselves out of this situation is another matter.

We arrived at this sad point through the desire to be self-important. Think of how many times you have seen someone try to make himself indispensable to a company by working more hours, taking on more responsibilities, even though their wages remained static. I’ve seen it too many times, and I’ve done it myself.

Late in the 19th century and early in the 20th century, the men of that age worked terribly hard to give us a decent life. They forced the government to enact labor laws regulating the number of hours a man can work in any given day. The government in turn forced the companies to abide by these laws. The men of that generation labored for the choice to live decent lives and not be the slave or serf of any man.

All that was thrown out the window the moment we, the people, decided we wanted to be important at what we do for a living, as if a man’s worth is the worth of his function within a corporate entity. And with the advent of all these communication technologies, the option of living a quiet decent life has become very difficult.

And it’s not hard to find something to be unhappy with in the modern workplace: heavy workloads, long hours and technology that keeps workers constantly on call. “They never get a break from their work responsibilities,” says Enyeart.

With laptops, PDAs, cell phones, e-mail and pagers, there is an ever-widening gap between the amount of information people are expected to keep up with and the amount they can reasonably process, says Dr. Kerry Sulkowicz, a psychiatrist and founder of the Boswell Group, a corporate consulting company in New York City. “The technology is outstripping our capacity to use it,” he says.

And, according to this article, this is one of the solutions offered by a company:

In August, her group introduced — by popular demand — a new workshop titled “How to Manage Emotions and Excel Under Pressure” that’s aimed at helping companies combat desk rage. Human resources personnel asked for the course to help deal with office temper tantrums and other destructive work behavior.

In other words, therapy. Note that turning off the cellphone, PDA or pager is not even an option anymore. Also, note that establishing concrete hours of operation isn’t even to be entertained. You see, the problem here is not the impossible demands of companies and managers. It is the employees. They should get a shrink and change into something… well, more acceptable. The employers created this insane environment for the workers and are shocked when their workers suddenly mount tirades at each other.

When you hear company slogans like “Expect More”, or “We will do everything to meet your needs”, or something along these lines, that means (equal sign) their employees will be given the short end of the stick.

It’s utter madness.

The Washington Times reported on December 6:

Report: Hamas talks with U.S. Democrats

Dec. 6, 2006 at 5:38PM

Hamas officials have smuggled more than $66 million into Gaza and have met with U.S. Democrats at a secret location, it was reported Wednesday.

The money covered the salaries of 69 percent of the Palestinian Authority’s 160,000 civil servants, authority Planning Minister Samir Abu Aisheh said.

This was the first time a senior Hamas official revealed the sum smuggled into the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border crossing, The Jerusalem Post reported.

The United States lists Hamas as a terrorist organization funded by Iran, Palestinian expatriates and private benefactors in Saudi Arabia and other Arab states.

Meanwhile, the Bethlehem-based Maan News Agency reported Hamas representatives recently had secret talks with U.S. Democratic Party officials in anticipation of the party regaining congressional power in Washington.

The Palestinian news agency also said Hamas had secret talks with European government officials, including with Britain and France.

Hamas succeeded in convincing European officials to accept the Sunni Islamist movement’s plan for a long-term truce with Israel as a substitute for recognizing Israel’s right to exist, the report said.

I really hope this isn’t what it sounds like…

I’m curious about what ya’ll think about the conservative line-ups for the Presidential Nomination. And by the way, this poll doesn’t mean a darn thing.