Master CraftsMon

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, January 28, 2008 at about 11pm CST

2008-01-28T19:05:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, January 28, 2008 at about 11pm CST

KEOS 89.1 FM College Station.

You are listening to the
Master CraftsMon, a program of debate and then
social activism from the Right. On this program we
will be exploring how to use the Internet as a means
of gathering resources to affect positive social
change in a community.

For I am but a voice from the velvet black calling to you across the
gulf of our mutual incomprehension.
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
This is the penultimate program which means the second to the last
program. February 4 is my last show.
o *Waiting for Godot is a play by Samuel Beckett*
o I needed streaming and I do not think it will come soon here at KEOS
o I perceive that we have social problems, but I do not
believe that the government can sovle them.
o I wanted to rally people to make changes.
o With 30 people listening, I do not think that is reasonable.

**EXPOUND**
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
Eileen asked me why my mind was closed on Global Warming last week. Let's first look at burden of proof. How do we know something is 'True'.

Outside a legal context, "burden of proof" means that someone suggesting a new theory or stating a claim must provide evidence to support it: it is not sufficient to say "you can't disprove this." Specifically, when anyone is making a bold claim, it is not someone else's responsibility to disprove the claim, but is rather the responsibility of the person who is making the bold claim to prove it. In short, X is not proven simply because "not X" cannot be proven (see negative proof).

Taken more generally, the standard of proof demanded to establish any particular conclusion varies with the subject under discussion. Just as there is a difference between the standard required for a criminal conviction and in a civil case, so there are different standards of proof applied in many other areas of life.

The less reasonable a statement seems, the more proof it requires. The scientific consensus on cold fusion is a good example. The majority believes this can not really work, because believing that it would do so would force the alteration of a great many other tested and generally accepted theories about nuclear physics.

In legal matters, there are levels of proof: Air of reality, Reasonable suspicion, Probable cause, preponderance of evidence, Clear and convincing evidence and then the gold standard of truth in the legal profession, Beyond reasonable doubt.
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
Global Warming is the product of an Information Cascade
**EXPOUND on Information Cascade**

Before we get to Global Warming, let me show you some of the projects that the
environmentalists

Most of what I have read has been compiled by Junkscience.com, which is
at www.junkscience.com run by Steven Milloy

DDT

* Rachel Carson and silent spring **EXPOUND on what it said**
* William Ruckelshaus of the Nixon Administration banned it in 1972.
* About 96M people died of malaria who would not have

If you can get your mind around this, a good number of the leaders in the environmental movement perceive this figure to be a good thing.

Population control advocates blamed DDT for increasing third world population. In the 1960s, World Health Organization authorities believed there was no alternative to the overpopulation problem but to assure than up to 40 percent of the children in poor nations would die of malaria. As an official of the Agency for International Development stated, "Rather dead than alive and riotously reproducing."
[Desowitz, RS. 1992. Malaria Capers, W.W. Norton & Company]

What sweethearts.

If you took one teaspoon of DDT vs one teaspoon of aspirin, which would would make you sicker quicker? The dosage makes the poison.

They unbanned DDT last year.
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
**EXPOUND on the 55 speed limit Save lives save gas**
o More time on the road means more chances to get hurt. Automobile travel
is inherently unsafe. On balance cost lives and money because of additional
travel cost
o Did not save gas
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
Paul Ehrlich in the late 1960's came up with the idea that we were slipping into a new Ice Age. He was making the point that starting in 1945, the world temperature had dropped precipiously, therefore we needed to expect the next ice age to appear ten thousand years early.

In 1975, the temperature started back up. Ehrlich did a 180 in the 1980's and started touting global warming with just as much fervor as he had touted global cooling.

I have a problem with that.
**EXPOUND**
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
Now let us talk about the ozone layer and dreaded freon.

OZONE

As every schoolboy should by now have read, total columnar ozone (the amount over a given point) would only amount to a paltry couple of millimetres if brought down to sea level. So, does this mean that our defence, our critical solar shield we call the ozone layer, is a thin and fragile membrane about the atmosphere, finite and being worn threadbare by assault from anthropogenic (human produced) chemicals? Hardly, although one could be forgiven for having such an impression given the hysteria generated by various chemophobes and misanthropes. Stratospheric ozone is not a fixed and finite resource but is constantly created - and destroyed - by solar radiation.

The banning of freon saved the lives of five hypothetical people each year in the Northern hemisphere at the cost of thousands dead in the Southern hemisphere because the alternatives to freon cost more, thus the Third Worlders could not refrigerate drugs needed to counter diseases.
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
In these are four information cascades that have happened in the last 50 years that have accomplished nothing while making life worse for the people it perported to help. In short the people putting forth human caused Global Warming have a rotten track record.

Now let us look at Global Warming.
o Margaret Thatcher and the coal miners strikes
o The heat island effect **EXPOUND**
o The lack of data out to sea
o The controversy dealing with the satellite data
o South Sea Islands are melting away. **EXPOUND on Starfish and coral**
o James Hansen of NASA is another big player in Gloabl Warming *EXPOUND - Heat Island Effect model disproved last year*
o **EXPOUND**The models from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change not based in reality

Again, let us talk about levels of proof: Air of reality, Reasonable suspicion, Probable cause, preponderance of evidence, Clear and convincing evidence and then the gold standard of truth in the legal profession, Beyond reasonable doubt.

**EXPOUND on Precautionary Principle**

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, December 24, 2007 at about 11pm CST

2007-12-24T20:05:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, December 24, 2007 at about 11pm CST

DON'T FORGET TO GET RECORDER.

KEOS 89.1 FM College Station.

And you have aRandomTexan. You can call me "a".

In the weather tonight, we have a temperature of _______
outside our studios at 202 E. Carson in Bryan.

Tonight, we could have Clear Skies with no chance of rain in the
forecast with a low of 34.
Tomorrow, Tuesday,
***Later on today, Tuesday,
we are supposed to have a high of 64 and a low of 43 with
Sunny Skies and 10% chance of rain.
Wednesday we can expect a high of 56 and a low of 33 with
Morning Showers and 30% Chance of rain.
Thursday maybe we can expect Partly Cloudy Skies and 20% chance of rain.
Look for a high of 59 and a low of 44.

Segment 1:
KEOS 89.1 FM College Station.

You are listening to the
Master CraftsMon, a program of debate and then
social activism from the Right. On this program we
will be exploring how to use the Internet as a means
of gathering resources to affect positive social
change in a community.

For I am but a voice from the velvet black calling to you across the
gulf of our mutual incomprehension.
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
I decided not to get involved in Christmas this year.

***EXPOUND***
*** Individual Taste ***
*** Why is it correct behavior for a minority to enforce its will on the
majority? ***
*** A Minister talked about 88% of the people not objecting to Creches or
minoras ***
*** The same minister told the story of the early debates about Christianity
in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Transformative power of Christianity
Could the debater find 100 people who had been transformed by Atheism?
Could find none. ***
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
To All My Democrat Family and Friends:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual
preference of the wishee.

To All My Republican Family and Friends:

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

*** When did Christmas become such a big political issue? ***

---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
Do I think Liberals have a case? Is it wrong that 20% of the populus is in
relative poverty? If I could be convinced that this was a chronic condition
where 20% of the populus stays in poverty forever, then that would be a
major problem. Liberals will not accept that 20% of the populus at some point
in their lives are in relative poverty.

*** Expound on Relative vs Absolute Poverty ***
*** Just because I do not want the government to do something, does not mean
that I do not want it done at all. ***
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
I perceive that the government has gotten too big. I perceive that the various
social agencies need to be carved out of the government and made service clubs
with an endowment.

I cannot figure out how this would be done, but I believe that the government
should do that, because the government cannot effectively do social programs.

*** Either the programs have worked or they have not. How do you measure and
how do you determine what is the truth? If all truth is just an opinion how
can you determine whether a program is achiving the goals that have been set
for it?***
*** EXPOUND ***
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
What irritates me about all this is that all the aguments have been made. All
the positions have been set in stone. Neither side will budge, because
idiologically both sides are convinced that they are correct.

Have the policies of the Democratic Party achived the goals they have set
themselves? If they have, great. If they have not, should they not get out of
the way and let the Republicans try to solve the problems facing the nation?

***Describe the Statue of Justice: Blindfold, scales and sword.***

Why does it make sense to use the Sword of Justice to force people to do
things without weighing the options? Because you feel you are correct?
Why does that make sense?

*** Conservatives know the cost of everything but the value of nothing. ***

Without weighing the costs, how can you get a just result? Should we spend
$10B to clean up a toxic waste dump or $10B to upgrade a 911 response system?
How many lives are going to be saved doing one or the other? If you say that
each life has an infinite value, then you ask for perfection.

Perfection is unattainable. If you stand on your high horse and demand
perfection, you put yourself in an unassailable position without solving or
even amiliorating the problem. All you do is make yourself feel good.

*** EXPOUND on perfection. Utopian dreams vs Reality. ***

If you ask the question: "What can be done to lessen a social problem instead
of alleviate it?" You come to a situation where positive change can be
implemented. By asking for a cure you encourage nihilism and pessimism.
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, December 17, 2007 at about 11pm CST

2007-12-17T18:55:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, December 17, 2007 at about 11pm CST

* Evolution
* Hillary is no longer inevitable
* Animes - Do your best mantra

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, December 10, 2007 at about 11pm CST

2007-12-17T18:53:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, December 10, 2007 at about 11pm CST

DON'T FORGET TO GET RECORDER.

KEOS 89.1 FM College Station.

And you have aRandomTexan. You can call me "a".

In the weather tonight, we have a temperature of _______
outside our studios at 202 E. Carson in Bryan.

Tonight, we could have Drizzle in a bit with 30% chance of rain in the
forecast with a low of 53.
Tomorrow, Tuesday,
***Later on today, Tuesday,
we are supposed to have a high of 79 and a low of 59 with
Scattered Thunder Storms and 30% chance of rain.
Wednesday we can expect a high of 61 and a low of 43 with
Thunder Storms and 60% Chance of rain.
Thursday maybe we can expect Partly Cloudy Skies and 10% chance of rain.
Look for a high of 61 and a low of 48.

Segment 1:
KEOS 89.1 FM College Station.

You are listening to the
Master CraftsMon, a program of debate and then
social activism from the Right. On this program we
will be exploring how to use the Internet as a means
of gathering resources to affect positive social
change in a community.

For I am but a voice from the velvet black calling to you across the
gulf of our mutual incomprehension.
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
We shall speak of heresy tonight.

*Re-iterate the goal of program. The goals here were to cut down on the need
for "face time". - No one commented on the last program. - Why should they?
Why should you?*

*Explain Baka*

*Talk about Occam's Razor*

*Give example of ice storm vs water truck then liquid nitrogen*

Liberalism has failed to achieve its goals using the methods developed by
Franklin Delano Rossevelt.

80% of the people in this country are in the middle class. 20% are in need.
Isn't that fantastic? Isn't that something to celebrate? It's not perfect,
but it's better than ANY civilization in the history of the world has
achieved. In most civilizations the top 1% have everything that is good in
life and the rest of the people are abjectly poor lacking even the basics of
food, clothing and shelter.

Liberalism is based on the need for 100%. If a system does not 100% of the
needs of a people, then the system is immoral. Or so it is supposed.

If you examine the 20%, you find that the 20% failure rate is not the same
20% of people forever. This is simply a phase in their life. If you define
poverty as lacking enough food, clothing and shelter, then the failure rate
in the U.S. is less than 3%. How do you define failure and how you define
perfect? That should be the correct debate. Or should it?

*Perfection in space and in time discussion - fashion, necessity and
the environment where the people live.*

*The need for a cure for social pathigens. Cure--- what does that mean?*

*JFK's inaugrial address in 1961*
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
*Groundhog Day - double digits in theological dissertations could go to
hundreds - perfectibility of man - Perfection is in space and time*
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek

Friedrich August von Hayek wrote "The Road to Serfdom".

You cannot have a collectivist government without a totalitarian government.
Why? People don't like their stuff stolen by the government.
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
*The college Scam - Examine IQ - why do you need four years to train someone*
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
*Eugenics movement and why it failed - 140 IQ woman marries 140 IQ man - baby
not 140 IQ*

http://www.blackgenocide.org/negro.html

"negro project margaret sanger"
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
The rest of this was from a fever dream I had.

*Why are we here and where are we going? - replicate Earth's biosphere
elsewhere, because we are the only species on earth who can.*

*Naked girl running across campus in a flowing black cape and a catwoman mask
- random event*

*Pureblood vs Mongrel*

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, December 2, 2007

2007-12-03T18:58:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, December 2, 2007 at about 11pm CST

DON'T FORGET TO GET RECORDER.

KEOS 89.1 FM College Station.

And you have aRandomTexan. You can call me "a".

In the weather tonight, we have a temperature of _______
outside our studios at 202 E. Carson in Bryan.

Tonight, we could have Clear Skies with no chance of rain in the
forecast with a low of 33.
Tomorrow, Tuesday,
***Later on today, Tuesday,
we are supposed to have a high of 67 and a low of 44 with
Sunny Skies and 10% chance of rain.
Wednesday we can expect a high of 74 and a low of 49 with
Sunny Skies and 10% Chance of rain.
Thursday maybe we can expect Partly Cloudy Skies and no chance of rain.
Look for a high of 74 and a low of 58.

Segment 1:
KEOS 89.1 FM College Station.

You are listening to the
Master CraftsMon, a program of debate and then
social activism from the Right. On this program we
will be exploring how to use the Internet as a means
of gathering resources to affect positive social
change in a community.

For I am but a voice from the velvet black calling to you across the
gulf of our mutual incomprehension.
---
We shall speak of heresy tonight.

I'm not taking any calls tonight. Last week was interesting, but this is not
what I set this program up for.

Hubris. **Expound**

Streaming was supposed to get this done. With only 30 people listening, can I
get anything done? I do not think so.

mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com

A guy here at KEOS made it clear that you do not want to DO, you want to
listen and be entertained. That's not what I want. Life is a full contact
sport.
---
The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya
She stands up and says as a transfer student that she wants to meet
espers, time travelers and aliens from another planet.

She is a complete babe, but is unapproachable. He starts obsessing on her.

* Scrunchie in her hair - color

So he strikes up her conversation

The old part of the school is where the clubs are.
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
Define Baka... To act stupidly or to be mistaken stupidly in the face of
contrary data.
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
Karl Marx was a Parasite. Borrowed money without any intention of paying it
back. He was in essence the equivalent of a mistress for Frederich Engels.
He supported himself as a writer, but was never paid much... A vast injustice
by his standards. Wordsmiths were the ones who should be at the top of
society, not capitalists.

Human nature is mutable and the New Man is possible.

**EXPOUND**
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
50000 years ago 3000 humans existed on the East coast of Africa who are the
ancesters of all humans alive today. That is the best guess at this moment.
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
Slavery has been around since forever. Guess when the last nation outlawed
slavery... Saudi Arabia 1963.

What if Europe had never existed OR what if Europe had been wiped out by the
plague in 541 or 1347? Would slavery have disappeared? That's baka. Britain
outlawed slavery in 1830 and started pushing hard for its eradication in 1840.
The United States joined the battle after the Civil War. Slavery would still
exist were it not for the Dead White Males. Saying anything else is baka to
me.
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
Jim Crow is probably the worst portion of our history in the United States,
because it was pecularly American idea. 1890-1964.

Damages the aether of the community.

o It had to have laws backing it up. We knew after the Civil War that this
type of behavior was immoral. **EXPOUND USING Following**

o It served no one any good. It just looked that way.
o forestalled mechanization
o Forestalled investment in the South
o Stand with the Nazi or not.

o The Sun Belt was born.
**EXPOUND**
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
JFK's inaugrial speech of 1961.

***EXPOUND***
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
High IQ does not make you superior or inferior. There is no correlation
between success in life and IQ. This is heresy. **EXPOUND**
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2677098.ece

James Watson, 1962 Nobel prize for being co-discoverer of DNA, made some conroversial remarks about Blacks in Africa.

The 79-year-old geneticist said he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really.". He said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”.

He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because “there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don’t promote them when they haven’t succeeded at the lower level”. He writes that “there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so”.

He claimed genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be found within a decade.

***Nature vs Nuture***
o Lots of food when young
o Choose for intellect
o Wait
---
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
---
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/have_you_bashed_a_white_male_t.html

November 26, 2007
Have You Bashed a White Male Today?
By Kyle-Anne Shiver
While I was a teenager and still enthralled with my own generation, the Boomers, I truly believed that we were heralding a new and better human nature. We were going to stamp out prejudice, discrimination, and every other foul practice in the hemisphere. No more bashing folks of color. No more negative stereotyping for females. No more blonde jokes, fat jokes, handicap jokes, divorce jokes, gay jokes or Polish jokes. Human nature be damned. We could all be nice to each other if we tried hard enough, if we just had enough determination.

Here we are forty years later, and it seems to me that all we've really accomplished is an exchange of all of our old prejudices for a new one. The demographic group that now gets it full on the chin at every turn, in every public sphere, is the lone, white male. Christians, especially the Catholic Church, are also an approved target, but that topic is for another article.

So we haven't gotten any better as human beings. We simply changed targets. And almost the only ones among us left with bull's-eyes upon their heads are the white males.

I happen to have quite a fondness for these guys. My father and grandfathers were white males. I have a white male twin brother. I've been married to a white male for 37 years. I count a number of these guys as friends and neighbors. So, it just doesn't sit right with me when, almost everywhere I turn, I see the guys I love most getting their stuffings beaten out in jokes, television commercials, movies, books - heck, all over the place. It's so PC, you know.

Nowadays white males are stereotyped in movies and ads as either beer-guzzling, practically illiterate rednecks or as overly sensitized, emasculated wimps. One would be hard put to find a good, old-fashioned, John-Wayne type male anywhere but on Spike TV. My husband claims he needs to watch Spike occasionally just to remind himself that it's still somewhat okay to be masculine in public.

But I had better fess up myself a bit here, or that husband of mine will call me a "lying hypocrite" behind closed doors. I have, on a scant few occasions, used my protected status as a female to either pick fights with men or win them, especially when in the company of other females. Okay, it's been more than a few times, but far less than a thousand. And I plan to give it up this year for Lent. Really.

Bashing white males with impunity is every bit as un-Christian as all the other generalized bashing. Racism. Sexism. Homophobia. Etcetera, etcetera.

When it comes to the white guys, the one thing that seems to have escaped our notice, though, is that if not for all of our white-male ancestors, there wouldn't be much of a civilization here for the rest of us to climb aboard. These men get bashed up and down, day in and day out, for shutting out people of color and women, for not allowing them to take any of the leadership roles. But that's only one way of looking at it.

The other way would be to pat these guys heartily on the back, and give kudos where kudos are due.

The fact is that the world was quite different 2 and 3 centuries ago. Slavery was an institution that stretched back to Biblical times, without skipping a beat, and was rampant around the world. The British and the United States led the abolition movement for the rest of the western world, and is still on the front lines in the battle to eradicate the last vestiges of the dastardly evil. The truth is that white males did not invent the institution of slavery, but they were the first to abolish it. That ought to count for something.

Many American white men were willing to fight and die in a bloody civil war, fought largely over slavery. And many more gave up segregation without resorting to another all out war. Those things wouldn't be anything to brag about in a perfect world, but perfect this world has never been. And I think we ought to take at least some pride in seeing black men and white men, and black women and white women standing shoulder-to-shoulder in every profession. That's not a shabby accomplishment within a single generation.

Our men marched this country in a steadily advancing civilization, from an agrarian society, to an industrial one, to a high-tech one, in which the jobs requiring rigorous physical labors, to which men were far better suited, have become outnumbered by positions requiring more brains than brawn. Because of that, more than the feminist movement, women are able to participate much more fully in the workplace than ever before in history. If our civilization had not made that leap, and provided so many ingenious inventions that cut so much time and labor from homemaking chores, women would probably still be largely left out, simply because of our natural physical limits. I say we ought to celebrate our men for such a huge accomplishment. Certainly no other poeple in history have done as much.

Now before I get an inbox avalanche of complaints, let me state for the record that I understand as well as anyone that the white guys didn't just roll over and throw down the red carpet for all the people of color and us women to join in holding the reins of power in this country. There was quite a bit of nudging, some of it pretty forceful.

However, there was no outright war. And put into a historical perspective, American white guys stand heads and shoulders above their foreign counterparts and predecessors.

So, from now on, before you bash a white male, stop to think about the other side of the coin, and ask yourself this:

If not for all those white guys who conceived of this Nation, who built it, fought for it, protected it, developed all of those inventions that brought progress and a greater standard of living to more people than any civilization in history, where would the rest of us be? Perhaps not all that well off.

Instead of bashing the white guys, we all ought to be thanking them, and get on with making an even better America. So, I say, don't bash a white guy today. Buy that man a beer!

**EXPOUND**

I tried to state that the man was mistaken, then I got sidetracked.

Who has this guy been dealing with in his career ***EXPOUND***

Why is this view so awful?

Too much IQ is debilitating.

**EXPOUND on public policy based on bad data**

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, October 1, 2007 at about 11pm CST

2007-10-01T19:09:00.001-07:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, October 1, 2007 at about 11pm CST

Are you SURE we are losing?

Bombs cannot win an insurgency war

Amadingdong is a liar and crazy to boot.

My dog ate my homework

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, September 17, 2007 at about 11pm CST

2007-09-17T18:18:00.000-07:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, September 17, 2007 at about 11pm CST

You might be a Liberal if...

September 8, 2007 - San Francisco

Protest signs In front of White House on September 15, 2007 - Part I

Protest signs In front of White House on September 15, 2007 - Part II

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, August 27, 2007 at about 11pm CST

2007-08-27T19:24:00.000-07:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, August 27, 2007 at about 11pm CST

DON'T FORGET TO GET RECORDER.

KEOS 89.1 FM College Station.

And you have aRandomTexan. You can call me "a".

In the weather tonight, we have a temperature of _______
outside our studios at 202 E. Carson in Bryan.

Tonight, we could have Scattered Thunder Storms with 60% chance of rain in the
forecast with a low of 74.
Tomorrow, Tuesday,
***Later on today, Tuesday,
we are supposed to have a high of 91 and a low of 74 with
Isolated Thunderstorms and 30% chance of rain.
Wednesday we can expect a high of 90 and a low of 74 with
Scattered Thunder Storms and 30% Chance of rain.
Thursday maybe we can expect Scattered Thunder Storms and 40% chance of rain.
Look for a high of 87 and a low of 74.

Segment 1:
KEOS 89.1 FM College Station.

You are listening to the
Master CraftsMon, a program of debate and then
social activism from the Right. On this program we
will be exploring how to use the Internet as a means
of gathering resources to affect positive social
change in a community.

For I am but a voice from the velvet black calling to you across the
gulf of our mutual incomprehension.
---
General Pace, Please Arrest G.W. Bush
---
Libs as closeminded:

www.americanthinker.com
August 24, 2007
Libs Say the Darndest Things
By James Lewis

o Christians.
Believing Christians are scary folks, sort of proto-fascists, who would kill or convert us all to their strange and scary beliefs if they had the chance.

o Corporations are evil.

o Capitalism. Capitalism murders just as many people as Stalin and Pol Pot did. Every political system kills millions of people. (The mind reels.)

o America. Americans are contemptible. Europeans are wonderful. (Facts are irrelevant).

o Genocide.
The US murdered just as many Native Americans as the Nazis killed Jews.
In short the killing of the American Indian was exactly the same as the
killing of the Jews by the Nazis. There is no difference.

o Mind-reading.
Liberals can read the minds of conservatives, without, of course, bothering
to read anything conservatives have written, or even talking to them.
Many libs are firmly convinced (without a shred of evidence, of course),
that conservatives hate Blacks, Jews, Gays, and Women.

o Israel. Israel is a pretty bad and nasty place.

o Military.
The military is made up of brutish evil people who LUCT to murder and destroy
things.

o Population.
The world has far too many people, and it would be a lot better if a lot
of them died or were never born.

o News vs. propaganda. Any news source other than the mainstream media is
right-wing propaganda. Indeed, anything suggesting that liberals are less than 100 percent right is right-wing propaganda. This comes from a friend who engages in constant self-censorship, who becomes visibly agitated when his beliefs are gently questioned.

o Dictators are evil except when they are on the left.
Stalin was not so bad. Yes, he killed millions in the Gulag,
but so did the United States. As for Castro, he is a great and wonderful
hero. So is Hugo Chavez. However, Augusto Pinochet was a bad, bad guy.

o Republicans.
Assassinating Republicans is a pretty good idea, as long as somebody else does it.

o War.
War would go away if just Republicans stopped stirring it up.

o Relativism. Reality is only a social agreement. There's no such thing.

o Global Warming.
Human-caused global warming is so true that we have to immediately quash all
debate about it.

o Increase Central Control and we will be freer.
Look up the skirt by standing under a grate. For every bad behavior,
there should be a law against it.

o Marriage is a vestage of the partriarchal paradym and should be
de-emphasized.

---
Wordsmiths

---
What is the origin of Allah?

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, August 20, 2007 at about 11pm CDT

2007-08-20T17:40:00.000-07:00

Here we go with another show.

Radical Chic

Let us look at the comments since the show began.
plasmapal, at Wednesday, February 14, 2007 1:04:00 PM

By jason hochman, at Wednesday, June 28, 2006 9:19:00 PM

By Anonymous, at Monday, July 03, 2006 12:58:00 AM

By montanafun, at Friday, December 29, 2006 8:56:00 PM
By Anonymous, at Wednesday, April 12, 2006 7:30:00 PM
By naked_edmund, at Wednesday, January 18, 2006 7:58:00 PM
By Phil, at Monday, February 20, 2006 12:18:00 AM

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, August 13, 2007

2007-08-13T19:19:00.000-07:00

All right. We begin again.

Tonight I covered the following topics from these web sites.
Paean to Castro's Cuba's Medical Availability

The Wall Street Journal showed me something, see:

We all handle Death through our own lenses,
Then go to:

When exactly does someone have to be held accountable:

Iranian Politics as seen through the polls:

On the Road to Jalalabad

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 5, 2007

2007-02-09T05:18:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 5, 2007 at about 11pm CST

DON'T FORGET TO GET RECORDER.

KEOS 89.1 FM College Station.

And you have aRandomTexan. You can call me "a". In
the weather tonight, we have a temperature of _______
outside our studios at 202 E. Carson in Bryan.

Tonight, we could have Showers with 20% chance of rain in the
forecast with a low of 41.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, we are supposed to have a high of 68 and a low of 47 with
showers and 20% chance of rain.
Wednesday we can expect a high of 72 and a low of 52 with
mostly sunny skies and 10% chance of rain.
Thursday maybe we can expect coudly skies and 10% chance of rain.
Look for a high of 58 and a low of 43.

Segment 1:
KEOS 89.1 FM College Station.

You are listening to the
Master CraftsMon, a program of debate and then
social activism from the Right. On this program we
will be exploring how to use the Internet as a means
of gathering resources to affect positive social
change in a community. If you want to follow along,
you need to boot up your computer and
go to mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com
MasterCraftsMon is one word with an "o" at the end
instead of an "a".

For I am but a voice from the velvet black calling to you across the
gulf of our mutual incomprehension.

***EXPOUND ON why anyone would listen to this program ***

The left and the right in this country see the world differently. I wanted to
get real dialog between the two camps. ***Light bulb joke***
---
Hanoi Jane become Jihad Jane

She was going to have a tour in a bus powered by vegetable oil. The tour fell
apart.

---
When Fonda says things like that, the Right goes nuts, because it absolved all
the members on the Left of any responsibility for the deaths in southeast
asia. Responsibility... The Left has always been short on that topic. I was
always struck in the 1960's how incensed the protesters who were arrested got.
They felt that what they were doing was above reproach and the very IDEA that
anyone would arrest them was just inconceivable.

To the people on the Right this was a retreat to childhood, where every bad
behavior was excused as caused by something other than the person involved.
---
Darfur vs Iraq

---
Where was the outrage on the Left when Saddam was slaughtering people left and
right? It is now known that CNN cut a deal with Saddam. CNN got to sit in
Bagdaghd and chronicle all the awful things that the US was doing to Saddam's
people during the embargoes as long as CNN ignored the mass graves, the rape
rooms and the various other barbarous behavior of Saddam. If CNN and the other
Mainstream meadia was covering Saddam as they cover Darfur, what would the
outcome have been. Think this through, people, what is the difference between
the behavior of Saddam and the nutjobs in the Sudan? I can't see it, but maybe
I am not nuanced enough.

Again, think this through why would we be going into Sudan?
*** REad the demands above and talk about them ***

---

Warriors and wusses
By JOEL STEIN
January 24, 2006
---
When this came out a year ago, people on the Left jumped back and quickly
tried to distance themselves from this guy's position... except those on
DailyKos, Democratic Underground and Moveon.org. All of these sites applauded
JOEL STEIN's courage.

You have to understand, to the Right what Stein said is just what every person
on the Right has assumed was true, but we assumed that the Left was lying
about. Take a deep breath. I am quite certain, you yourself do not want to be
thought of as someone who lies. The problem is that the Right assumes the Left
is lying because of the actions of your leaders. Too many of the leaders on
the Left are calling our soldiers, Nazis, torturers and various other names.
*** EXPOUND read back through the article. ***
---
Blackfive's Take on Arkin (***ADULT CONTENT****)

By William M. Arkin | January 30, 2007; 8:51 AM ET
William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security
The Troops Also Need to Support the American People
---
Arkin is saying that he believes that the United States military is saying to
the Amercian people, "Shut up." AND he is stating that the U.S. military has
no right to do that at all. I look at the remarks he quotes and draw a
different conclusion. The soldiers are stating as fact that the news media is
reporting all the destruction which the U.S. military is perpetrating without
reporting on the rebuilding efforts they are perpetrating.

Have you ever seen a shouting match between protesters? I mean, picture this
one group of people with signs opposing the war and another set of people
in favor of the war. In between the two groups is the police. If one side
starts screaming, "Shut Up!", Shut Up,Shut UP!" Does it mean anything with the
police standing there? Nope. Neither side can shut the other side up.

When the Dixie Chick started saying that their 1st Amendment rights were
infringed by people screaming "Shut Up!", Shut Up,Shut UP!", the Right was
unable to understand her position. The people shouting "Shut Up!", Shut Up,
Shut UP!" had no power to shut her up. People, cognitive dissonence... She
screamed her head off at people who gave her a hard time. It went on forever.
It even became a marketing tool. How were her 1st Amendment rights infringed.
Freedom of speech does in insulate you from getting your feelings hurt. It
just doesn't. Freedom of speech does not make it possible to duck all
responsibility for your words.

Look at Arkin. He is stating the same case as the Dixie Chicks. He is saying
that the military is in fact attempting to stop debate by saying that they
believe in what they are doing... Even IF the miliary was shouting, "Shut
Up!", Shut Up,Shut UP!", what good does it do without physcially stopping
people from talking. Are you stating that having your emotions hurt because
someone verbally abused you entitles you to some type of sympathy?

*** EXPOUND by going over text ***
---

By William M. Arkin | February 1, 2007; 9:39 AM ET
William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security
The Arrogant and Intolerant Speak Out
*** EXPOUND Go back through the above and comment ***
---

By William M. Arkin | February 1, 2007; 5:31 PM ET
William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security
A Note to My Readers on Supporting the Troops
----

Sophistry
1.a subtle, tricky, superficially plausible, but generally fallacious method of reasoning.

*** EXPOUND on the above and show how it is Sophistry by the standards of the Right. ***

The Europeans handled terror in Europe by attacking it as a criminal activity.
They accepted that a certain number of people would die each year through
terrorist attacks. By staying on top of it, they could cut down the terrorist
attacks.

We are up against a foe who truly believes they can kill off our civilization
and replace it with a Muslim run civilization. Are you on the Left so sure
that they can't do it? WHY!? That's what we on the Right cannot understand.
Why do you feel that the Irreconcilables of radical Islam can be placated or
even ignored or treated as a criminal enterprise?

If you could come up with something that made sense to us, we on the Right
would welcome the debate. The problem is that we cannot understand your
position. It's like this, you and I are standing there doing something and I
suddenly notice a fella running toward us with a sword. You say to me that we
should do nothing, because obviously the guy can't hurt us with a sword. If
you try to keep me there without making any preparations to meet the guy, then
I would not be a happy camper. At that point, in fact, I would have to doubt
your sanity. IF I try to prepare for the guy with the sword and you try to
stop me, why do you think I should thank you? You see the guy running toward
us with the sword, I see the guy running toward us with his sword. You
absolutely refuse to tell me how you are going to handle the guy with the
sword. Why should I be happy about that?

Look... Iraq is about Friction. Karl von Clauwitz made the point that little
bitty things can throw the plans of the enemy off just because there is so
much confusion. **** ON WAR Napoleonic wars... What he learned....***

The reason we have not had a subsequent attack like 9/11 is
because we have introduced friction into the enemy's logistic train. The
police could not do that. We fight a strategic war. A war where we protect
ourselves by causing the enemy to make mistakes. If the noise of this war
stops, the enemy will have time to plan without anyone noticing what they are
doing and just as with 9/11, the strike will be out of the blue.
---
A little something to think about. Not all three of these statements be true.
We live in a fascist state
George Bush is a Nazi
Jane Fonda is alive

If all three of the above statements are true, please explain to me HOW!?
Something to think about.
---

On congressional opposition:

WSJ: There's a lot of discussion in Congress about putting caps on troop
levels or defunding or saying you can't deploy, as commander in chief, troops
in Baghdad. Do you think Congress has the constitutional authority . . .

GWB: I think they have the authority to defund, use their funding power . . .

WSJ: You do?

GWB: Oh yeah, they can say 'We won't fund.' That is a constitutional
authority of Congress. I find it interesting, however, that on the one hand
the Senate listens to the testimony of David Petraeus, who said, send me over
with some additional reinforcements and this is the best chance to succeed.
And they vote for him 81 to nothing. In other words, they listened to his
testimony, appreciated what he had to say, and then they forgot the part about
how he said I need the help. There's a contradiction there. . . .

WSJ: Can they put caps on total deployments in Iraq?

GWB: They can . . . through the purse. In others, I don't know if they're
going to. And I don't want to predict. But they have the right to try to use
the power of the purse to determine policy.

WSJ: But can they put conditions on those funds? Can they say we're only
gonna give you the money if you don't send troops to Anbar province?

GWB: They put conditions on funds all the time. Some of those are called
earmarks.

WSJ: Would you veto . . .

GWB: Well, . . . I have put forth a plan that will succeed and it needs to be
given a chance. So I'll wait and see what they try to do. But I have said
[to] the American people I've analyzed every plan and I think this one has the
best chance of success. If you think failure is a disaster, then you have an
obligation to come up with a plan for success and this is the one that I think
will work.

MasterCraftsMon for Monday, October 9, 2006

2006-10-09T19:27:00.000-07:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, October 9, 2006 at about 11pm CST

So here we are again. Tonight the Texas A&M Debating Society is supposed to make and appearance and debate:

"Is Racism the major reason why Blacks are poor in this country?"

If you have something to contribute, please do.

Afterwards, I went over some events of the week:

Anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto
Foley Scandal

The links for tonight are:
Black supremacist

Battle of Lepanto

MasterCraftsMon for Monday, October 2, 2006

2006-10-02T18:55:00.000-07:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, October 2, 2006 at about 11pm CST

So here we are again. Tonight the Texas A&M Debating Society is supposed to make and appearance and debate:

"Social Security vs Private Accounts"

If you have something to contribute, please do.

Afterwards, I went over some events of the week.

The links for tonight are:

Victor David Hanson's Analysis of the Term Islamofasicists

MasterCraftsMon for Monday, September 25, 2006

2006-09-25T16:45:00.000-07:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, September 25, 2006 at about 11pm CST

So here we are again. Tonight the Texas A&M Debating Society is supposed to make and appearance and debate:

Socialized Medicine - Pro or Con

If you have something to contribute, please do.

Show for Monday, September 18, 2006

2006-09-18T19:18:00.000-07:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, September 18, 2006 at about 11pm CST

So here we are again. Tonight the Texas A&M Debating Society is supposed to make and appearance and debate:

"Abortion, Pro and Con"

If you have something to contribute, please do.

The links for tonight are:

Fruitless

Outside the womb birth

Book called Smart Sex by Jennifer Roback Morse

"Roe vs Wade" vs Tecnology

Show for Monday, September 11, 2006

2006-09-11T18:58:00.000-07:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, September 11, 2006 at about 11pm CST

So here we are again. Tonight the Texas A&M Debating Society is supposed to make and appearance and debate:

"Minimum Wage, Pro and Con"

If you have something to contribute, please do.

Show for Monday, August 21, 2006

2006-08-28T19:55:00.000-07:00

If you have gotten this far, then leave a post about what you thought as you listened to my show tonight. It is about 10pm. The show starts in an hour in the future, I shall try to do a better job here of what the show is about. Tonight I covered:
o Some stuff about KEOS
o Definition of what I am trying to dow with the show
o Why Liberalism is a bad idea... The tools don't work.
o Demographic bobmb facing Liberalism.
o Beginning remarks about religion
o Fisking of an Ann Coulter article
o Religion as a social good.
o Run out the door screaming... "Thank God that's Over."

Links for tonight's show:
John F. Kennedy - Inaugural Address - Friday, January 20, 1961
Demographic bomb
Current Ann Coulter Article - August 22, 2006 [May not be there for long]

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, May 15, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Index

2006-05-15T19:30:00.000-07:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, May 15, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Index

Segment 1: The Left has failed at social activism by my standards

Segment 2: Why I think Communism, Socialism and Liberalism cannot work

Segment 3: Could Habitat for Humanity produce more houses?

Segment 4: The Deprived: A method of having children volunteer to get educated

Segment 5: Is there a Conservative solution to Social Security?

Segment 6: Why do you think we are at war with the Irreconcilables of radical Islam?

Segment 7: Why is Bush hated? Just askin'.

NOTE: I do not claim that all of the above is original. Where I have been able to do so, I have given links. If I have plagerized someone else's works without attribution, please give me the link and I shall make an update.

The Left has failed at social activism by my standards

2006-05-15T19:23:00.000-07:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, May 15, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 1

Last week I tried to make the case that the words are the problem in our society. This week I'm going to try something else.

There was a guy who pointed out in one of the on-line magazines that I read that for mathematicians, if someone said that 1+1=3, then the man is an idiot. If the man convinced five of his friends that 1+1=3, then all six of them are idiots. If the man convinced 1M people that 1+1=3, then to a mathematician all one million and one of them are idiots.

The problem arises when a political movement is based on the premise that 1+1=3, that is: What happens when people believe something that is demonstrably untrue, yet they refuse to acknowledge that the premise and the entire argument is untrue?

Communism, Socialism and Liberalism are from the same root. They all believe that a strong central government will bring about social justice. That term social justice is a strange concept because it presupposes that everyone can agree that the outcome of any event was correct.

Karl Marx had a problem when he defined Communism. No one had ever tried to base a society on Communism. Every experiment that had been tried using something close to Communism had failed catastrophically. Marx in his writings made it clear that for Communism to rise above Utopian dreams, there had to be some basis in Reality. As near as I can tell Marx expected the modern day equivalent of the Peasants War to overturn Capitalism and replace it with Communism. It was just inevitable.

The Peasants War in Germany was not covered when I was in school. I ran across it just recently. This happened in the 1500's in Germany. The peasants were paying all the taxes and rents, the nobles and the Catholic Church were living off the taxes and rents in luxury and the peasants had no say in how the money was spent. The peasants were owned by the person who owned the land. In certain cases the rent plus taxes required a peasant to fork over 80% of their crops. That did not leave much for them to live on.

What I am getting at is that Marx assumed that modern Europe was made up of classes. He assumed that these classes were homogenous and had loyalty to each other rather than to the nation state they lived in. He assumed that the poor were a class. The poor would revolt once the profits of Capitalism fell to the point that Capitalists were forced to exploit the poor like the nobles and clergy did prior to the Peasants' War. He also made the point that this immiseration had to come about before the coming of true Communism. If immiseration did not come about, then Communism was just another Utopian dream which could never be attained. If the poor did not overthrow Capitalism, then Communism would never have legitimacy. Communism was supposed to be scientific socialism. The whole point of Communism is to help the poor by insuring that the land, the labor and the capital are in the control of the workers. In short, everyone could get what they needed and no one would suffer from want of anything.

The problem for Marx was that the United States spoiled everything. Our poor have never been consigned to poverty for life. Through hard work a person from a poor family can move up to being a millionaire in their life. In order to be immiserated, the poor have to stay poor. The poor in our country have not gotten with the program and stayed poor. Less than 10% of the US populace start poor and stay poor for their entire life.

All right what I am getting at is that no one has listened to me for the last 24 shows. Or rather one of two people have listened to me, but done nothing to help me get the program to work the way I want it to.

SOoooOo I'm going to tell you this Erma Bombeck joke to make my point.

Erma Bombeck was a housewife who wrote columns about raising children. She said in one column that she was astonished by what she read in the Dr. Spock books and other child rearing books about how to raise children. She decided that she was an open minded person, so she wanted to give them a fair shake.

One of the sections in a children rearing book she saw, said, "Do not order children about. It hurts their self-esteem. It shows no respect for their self-actualization. It might damage their self-image... When something must be done, what you should do is point out the problem and the child will happily remedy the situation."

So Erma put this huge dictionary on the floor in front of the door where her children would pass once they got home from school.

The eldest, a girl, wanders in. Erma says, "There is a book on the floor."

Her daughter looked at the big book and then back at her and said, "Yeah, there sure is, someone should do something about that." So she goes on up to her room.

Her second child, a girl, comes in and trips over the book. Erma says, "There's a book on the floor."

Her daughter says, "Yeah, I tripped over it. Someone should do something about that." So she too goes up to her room.

The youngest, a boy, comes in the door. Erma says, "There's a book on the floor." The little boy looks at her, then looks at the book. Then nods his head rapidly up and down, smiling a silly smile.

By that time. Erma'd had enough of this, so she says sharply, "Well, pick it up and put it on the shelf behind you."

The little boys eyes get real big and he says crossly, "Why didn't you tell me to do that in the first place?" So he picks up the book and puts it on the shelf.

All right. You're saying, "What's that got to do with anything?"

Well, we are going to play a little game tonight. As I have said, I have a blog. I have bemoaned the fact that my invitations to you to come to my blog and make comments have not worked. The blog is at: mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com. Mastercraftsmon is one word spelled, .

I am now going to make my case for various social policies. I want you, yeah, you to go out and make comments or rebut my assertions. I am assuming that there is at least one person out there listening. By my standards that may be too generous. KEOS looks to have about 300 people donate in our last pledge drive, so the audience has to be thin on the ground for this station, much less my right-wing meanderings.

Again, I want you to go out to my blog is at:
mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com.

Mastercraftsmon is one word spelled, .
Wait... You people do know that there is a http:// in front of that.

I give up. Either you figure this one out or you don't. I am attempting to get people, that means you, dude or dudette, to come help me fix some problems in our society. The Internet has the capability to marshal resources and get things done. Well, get involved. Life is a full contact sport.

The lament that "someone should do something about that" is idiocy to me. In the history of the world, I am the radical. The Liberals of this country are the status quo. I believe that people can take care of themselves. I believe that people working together in community service groups can do a better job of providing a social safety net than the government. If you believe otherwise, then make your case.

The Liberals of this country have in fact failed to achieve their goal of social justice. Period... 1+1 does not equal 3. If you believe that social justice can be attained by a nanny state, then you are insane by my standards, because NO ONE IN HISTORY HAS EVER MADE ANY FLAVOR OF SOCIALISM TO WORK. Over 70 nations have tried various forms of socialism and communism. All 70 failed to achieve much of anything except have their economies collapse and increased the suffering of the poor.

Why I think Communism, Socialism and Liberalism cannot work

2006-05-15T19:20:00.000-07:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, May 15, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 2

Let's go back to the start of this program and I will try to get the answers to questions I have been asking for the last 24 shows, except I did not ask explicitly enough.

First let me talk about Communism. Why won't Communism work? Well, it can, assuming you want to live in a mud hut. If you want to live in a high tech society, Communism makes that impossible, because it quickly eliminates master craftsmen, people committed to excellence in their craft.

There was this guy named Conner in about 1830. He came over to the U.S. from Scotland with the idea of proving that Communism would work better than Capitalism. Yeah, Communism, predated Marx. Anyway. Conner gave speeches to the entire U.S. government when he arrived in Washington, D.C. He had to give his talk twice, because not all the Congressmen, members of the Supreme Court and the President could make it for the first one. Are you getting this? Conner was able to get the Executive, Judicial and Legislative branches of the U.S. federal government to come and hear him speak. He made his case and went out to Ohio to set up a Communist utopia in a town that he had bought for the experiment.

The problem he had was that the master craftsmen wouldn't work for the same salary as the street sweepers. The best black smiths, window hangers, and whatnots just got tired of getting less than what they could get elsewhere and left town. Very quickly the town started to fall apart physically. Conner tried repeatedly to make the project work and it failed. After repeated failures, Conner gave up and went back to Scotland. His son ended up with the property and made a go of it using Capitalism. In short, when a master craftsman has an alternative, he doesn't stick around and allow Communists to exploit him.

What about the Soviet Union? That was a totally Communist country. Surely the master craftsmen would be required to stay around? Yep, they sure were, but the master craftsmen lost heart and stopped being the best. To be the best you have to have the best tools and resources to explore improvements in your trade. They couldn't get that in the Soviet Union. I mean, if you are a creative person and have to fight bureaucrats for every single nail, you just give up after a while. And that's what you saw in the Soviet Union, their tech base slowly degraded. They were just unable to keep up with the U.S. because their master craftsmen kept giving up and becoming second raters. By the third generation, the Soviet Union was a Third World country with a nuclear arsenal... that probably never would have worked.

What about Socialism? Surely the Europeans are living in a paradise. Nope, not by my standards. Their master craftsmen are slowly becoming second raters. Their tech base is degrading and they are finding it hard to simply keep things going. Socialism by and large can work, but it causes master craftsmen to give up after a while. I mean, to be the best you have to commit yourself to BEING the best. If you constantly see these lazy layabouts having a good time while you work hard, you slowly lose heart and become a second rater or worse decide that having fun is fantastic so you become a third rater. If you think Europe under Socialism is working, I draw your attention to the fact that few Europeans have won Nobel Prizes in last few years. Where is the innovation? In the arts? Yeah, great, but you can't keep up a high tech society with English majors.

Then there is American Liberalism. As far as I can tell Liberalism won't work, because it wipes out master craftsmen on many different fronts. First there is the family. Feminism has the ideal that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Without a two parent family, it is difficult to get a master craftsman. Then there are the Gays. Their goal is to eliminate monogamy in marriage. It is almost impossible to keep a marriage going without sexual fidelity. And of course there is the Liberal creed that everything is relative. Pi is defined as about 3.1415. If you try saying that pi is 3.0 then buildings start falling down. Plus there is the emphasis in Liberalism on government funding of attempts at social justice. Under a totally Liberal controlled polity, your master craftsmen finally give up, because they just will not support people they perceives as lazy layabouts. In short, your tech base starts to degrade, slowly, admittedly, but things do indeed start falling apart. I draw your attention to Detroit. They ran out all the master craftsmen and the city is falling apart. And what about New Orleans? Each of these cities has been under Liberal rule for many years. If Liberalism was going to work, wouldn't you see indications that these two cities were more prosperous than places under Republican rule? Wouldn't you expect that the areas that have been under the Democratic Party to be more just, wouldn't you expect that poverty would be less? Wouldn't places where Democrats have had a chance to implement their agenda be much better places to live?

Show me. That's all I'm asking. If you can show me some cities in this country where philosophy of Liberalism has been implemented and social justice has been achieved, I would appreciate it. I have heard that some of the Northern cities have gotten things to go well under Liberalism, but there appears to be a net immigration from these cities to other parts of the country. I could be mistaken. I have also heard that certain of the West Coast cities have achieved a form of social justice, but, again, I could be mistaken.

In short, Communism, Socialism and Liberalism do not work. If they were going to work, they would have worked by now... somewhere. They cannot work in a high-tech society, because they degrade the tech base to the point that you are living on charity from other countries. Communism and Socialism have been tried in over 70 countries. Liberalism has been implemented in a large number of cities in this country. They have not produced good results. In fact, if you implement a Socialist agenda on a Capitalist state, your economy collapses pretty damned fast. I draw your attention to South Africa under Nelson Madela. I hasten to point out that I know the White South Africans were morally wrong, but you cannot dispute that their present economy is failing.

Ah, but people committed to Communism, Socialism and Liberalism perceive themselves to be more moral than me, because their philosophy is better than Capitalism. I say it is not, because of slavery. Yes, that's pretty harsh, but that's the way I look at it. Taxes are a form of conscription or involuntary servitude, when they are wasted. I say that you waste taxes when you get no results OR worse when the governmental solution makes the social problem bigger. I accept that there has to be some conscription in a society, but I refuse to say that something is moral, if it achieves no real results.

Let's take a simple example. I was on the local Head Start board of directors for a while. The goal of Head Start is to cut down on the number of at risk kids that drop out of school before they graduate from high school. It doesn't work. There are numerous studies that show kids who were in Head Start are just as likely to drop out of school as those who were not. Why am I paying taxes to support a program that has failed? Ah, the answer from Liberals is that, if we did nothing it would be worse. That's what gets me. The program has failed. All the literature that I have seen, shows that Head Start doesn't affect anything past the 6th grade. If it was up to me, I would privatize Head Start and let volunteers handle the kids. You see, there are some facets of Head Start I agree with, but it should be done with volunteers, not paid staff. Right now too many people involved in Head Start have to have masters degrees to work in the project. Someone with a masters degree gets paid more than someone who does not. Why should I pay someone with a masters degree to do a job that can be done just as well by someone who does not have a masters degree?

If you are going to conscript me to do something, then you best know that what you are doing will work OR are pretty sure it will work. Why in the world should you conscript me to do something, if you have evidence that the solution achieves no results? By my standards that is a form of slavery. What part of "I am a Republican and I am against slavery." do you not understand?

What I want you to do is rebut what I have said above. I want you to go out to my blog and make comments about this set of ideas, because I perceive that social activism from the Left has failed. I perceive that social activism from the Right is a better solution, because the way I want to attack problems is volunteerism. I do not believe that the conscription method works.

Could Habitat for Humanity produce more houses?

2006-05-15T19:16:00.000-07:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, May 15, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 3

Let me start over. When I started this program 24 weeks ago, I approached the problem incorrectly. The first project I threw out 24 weeks ago was to increase the number of houses produced by Habitat for Humanity nationwide by 100000 when fully implemented. In short the goal of this project is to make an additional 100000 houses available to poor people under the Habitat for Humanity project... each year... nationwide. Remember, I said nationwide, not local. That is a very important point so write that down for future reference. What I need you to do is help me get together a presentation to Habitat for Humanity, so that they would be interested in doing the project.

The basic idea here is that people go to sporting events. People over the years have lamented that we can spend a gazillion dollars on sports stadiums, but not a penny on relieving the plight of the poor. What if we asked people at sporting events to volunteer to build houses for the poor? Do the math. How many professional sports stadiums are there for football, basketball and baseball? Now, how many college sports stadiums are there for football, basketball and baseball? Semi-pro? Why not? High school? Interesting concept that? Then you have to do the math on how many people actually attend such events and assume that between 1% and 0.1% of the people would be interested in doing the project. I don't know about you, but that looks like to me that both of those numbers are kind of large. You divide the number of stadiums into 100000 to see how many houses per stadium you could produce, then you divide 100000 by the number of people who might participate in the project. When you do that, you can see that the project is doable. BUT can it be done in the real world?

Plus there is one other aspect of this project that you should consider. People going to ball games are not holding on to their money as tightly as at other times in their lives. People going to sports events would be more likely to donate to a project like this, IF it was associated with the team. Think about it. What if you as a sports fan could say, "Yeah, my team had an 0-50 season last year, but there are 50 families that have a good house to live in. I know, because I help build one of them." It adds an interesting dimension to the concept of being a fan, does it not? I mean, your team can stink, but your house builders could be better than the other team's house builders. Wouldn't you donate your money, if you couldn't donate your time?

Let's just talk about local for a moment. The idea I have is that we don't build the houses on a foundation. Build each of the houses on the house moving structure close to an Aggie football game. Then move the completed house to the foundation it will set on.

Some number above 26000 people attend Aggie football games each week. What if 1% helped with the four houses? That's 260 people. You can complete quite a houses with 260 people pretty damned quick. Ah, but what if it was only 0.1% or 26 people. Still that would be enough.

Ah, but what if we didn't complete the houses in the Aggie football season. So what? It's always ball season. We run with it for during a certain portion of the year, then we bounce it, then we hit it. And if you include soccer, we even kick it a lot. It's always ball season.

There is a possible problem with this. Habitat for Humanity has an elaborate screening method for choosing a recipient for a house. What if that screening method cannot physically be ramped up for additional houses? Right now, each recipient must work a certain number of hours on their own house or someone else's house. They must be trained to be responsible home owners. What if an influx of an additional families is just not doable? That begs the question: How many houses maximum can Habitat do per year? Don't know. If you will help me with the presentation, the we'll just have to find out. Whatever the number is, my method would be an improvement on the possible number of houses. Or would it?

In a Capitalist solution to a problem, you have to worry about land, labor and capital. I perceive that the biggest holdup in producing house for the poor is that Habitat has a shortage of labor. What if I am wrong?

The problem would be that you would have to have repeat people. I mean, Habitat has this training program they put people through before they allow them to work on a house. I agree with that. It is suicidal to put untrained people on a construction site. So it requires that people come back week after week to work on the project. How many would do that? I say it would be many, if you motivated them correctly.

How can people be motivated to do something for their community? The most common motivations are, of course, religion, tradition, patriotism and simple greed. There are others, but I will give examples of just these few.

What if each church in our community that was interested in helping was given the task of holding a prayer breakfast on the house building site? That is symbolically correct. At dawn you pray and the minister speaks of death and rebirth symbolized by the coming of the day. Or the sermon could be on the need for charity in a civil society. Or... I don't know, each church would have to work it out.

I mean, think about it, you pray at dawn, work to help your neighbor before kickoff, then see an Aggie football game. At the end of the day, you could look back on a day well spent. It just don't get better than that.

And why does it have to be restricted to Christians? I mean, surely there are Jewish religious communities locally that would be interested in a project like that. I know, there is a restriction about working on Saturday. A Talmudic scholar would have to ponder deeply whether he would condone such an enterprise. I would pose the question to him, "If your neighbor lives in a rotten house and you can do nothing about it, that is one thing. If you can do something about it without much extra effort, would that not be a mitzvah?" Of course such a scholar would have to consult the Torah, communicate with various religious authorities and pray for guidance from above. OR he could consult his mother... who would say, "OY, God is my witness, I tried. Oh, God, I tried to teach this boy right from wrong. Then he went off to the yahshiva and all his common sense leaked out of his head. Of COURSE it's a mitzvah, you're going to the game anyway. Why not work on a house for someone who has none?" Ah, it probably turns out that I have offended all the Jews in the world. No one has a Jewish mother like that anymore. There probably IS a religious restriction against donating your time to a worthy cause on the Sabbath even if you do have a religious service on the grounds. There might even be a restriction against attending Aggie games on Saturdays. If so, I apologize. I invite you to participate in this project, but cannot demand it, for I am but a voice from the velvet black calling to you across the gulf of our mutual incomprehension.

As for people of Islam, I worry at that. The fatwas coming out of Mecca make me wonder whether Muslims could have morning prayers on a Saturday, arise from their prayer mats and build a house for an unknown neighbor. Too much mutual incomprehension there as well. It looks like from press reports Muslims in this country consider themselves Muslims first and Americans second. To build a house for an infidel might be an unclean thing to do. I would invite Muslims to participate in such a project but would not be able to predict whether they would be interested. How would you phrase such an invitation so that it is correct behavior for a Muslim to participate?

That's the religious aspect to appeal to. And, yes, I probably left out your religion, but I wanted to make the case that charity seems to be in many religions and greeting the dawn and working for the common good is pretty normal across cultures. Pray, work for the common good and then play. Is that not a day well spent?

What about a call to tradition? Barn raising used to be a common aspect of American life. Why not set up a time and place for people not involved in religion to come and build on the house, then go off to the football game? You can be an atheist and still want to help your neighbor. I have always felt that hard work puts a certain savor on a cold drink at a good game. Could just be me.

And then there is patriotism? Al-Quida has many mighty destroyers, but such a project would proclaim to the world that we... are mighty builders.

And of course there is simple greed. Why not figure out how to allow some people to build a house and go to the game at a discount or... whatever? I just don't know what incentives are available for this one, but I do know that such an incentive should be considered.

Ah, well, that was the start of the first project. Go out to my blog and make comments and ask questions. We have a lot of ground to cover before we present this to Habitat. I'll be asking you to contact Habitat and get them involved at some point.

You might say, "Well, you can do all that." Sure, but that's not my goal. I am interested getting you, that means you, dude and dudette, to become involved in their community. I'm already involved. The point of this show is to increase involvement, not simply sit around and bemoan the fact that things are not going well and 'someone should do something about that'.

The Deprived: A method of having children volunteer to get educated

2006-05-15T19:12:00.000-07:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, May 15, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 4

There seems to be a large number of children who think they cannot make it in this country, so they drop out of high school without getting a degree. Their thinking goes that since they're going to a have a crappy life, then why get a high school degree? Or they believe that getting good grades is a waste of time.

I think there should be a club for children who think their lives are hopeless. I came up with a name for the club, The Deprived. The idea is that the children in The Deprived volunteer to have a better life. I know, that sounds kind of strange, but the problem is that too many kids are just so screwed up in the head that they feel deprived of their birthright. I mean, in America each child should have a reasonable expectation that their lives will be better than their parents' lives. What if the parents have dropped the ball? What if events have conspired to make it seem impossible for them to achieve even a modicum of prosperity? Why not try to catch the kids before they make the mistake of rejecting an education?

Too many children are being raised in single parent families. Any sane person knows that children in a single parent family are in deep trouble. What if you could get the kids to believe that they ARE in trouble? What if you said that there was a way out, if they joined a club for people who ARE losers, but want to win? What if the club offered college scholarships to everyone who went through the program? Or alternatively offered scholarships to trade school? OR promised to back them financially so they could start their own business?

I can see the posters to be put on the walls of the school.

Are you having a rotten life? Do you feel your future is a deep dark chasm about to suck you in? Is there no light at the end of the tunnel for you? Maybe you need to consider joining The Deprived.

The way I conceive of the club is for the children in high school to swear off promiscuous sex, drugs and alcohol. There would have to be some pretty hefty parties to make it seem worthwhile. There would have to be quite a few lectures and application of lectures on personal finance, job interviews and starting their own business. The goal of dating would change from having sex to getting ready for marriage.

Let me tell you a story from history. In the early 1800's, England became very wealthy, very fast. The time period was called the Edwardian era. The family crumbled. People became rootless. The children of the Edwardians became the Victorians. The Victorians REALLY wanted structure. They were tired of having families falling apart. They established one of the strictest codes of conduct I have ever run across. You thought the Puritans were straight laced. These folks were REALLY straight laced. The problem was that no human could live up to that code of conduct, so there was a huge amount of hypocrisy. In public, people acted proper. In private they acted as they pleased. I am not in favor of a strict moral code. I only give this example to make the point that the kids of libertines CAN decide they don't want to go the same way as their parents.

You've got to understand that too many children in this country are growing up in an unhealthy family environment. When they get to high school, they seek out cliques to provide the structure that they are not finding at home. In some cases the cliques are destructive gangs. In other cases, it's just a set of friends to hang out with. The problem arises when the clique has a self-destructive outlook on life. I read a book called, Beyond the Classroom.

In it the authors did a ten year study of seven schools to determine what was wrong with the public schools in general. They were trying to decide why school reform was not working. I mean, the battle cry of the 1970's was that things would get better in the schools when the Pentagon had to hold bake sales to buy supplies. In short, we should be spending as much on our school systems as we are spending on Defense. Well, we have done that. Right now the federal, state and local level governments spend more on schools than the federal government spends on the Pentagon.

Why are the schools still so bad? Or rather why do people still seek to improve the schools, because they do not perform at the level people think they should perform?

This book, Beyond the Classroom, determined that children in high school form cliques who either reinforce their drive to better themselves or destroy any hope of bettering themselves. The cliques for Orientals pushed their members to make A's. The cliques for Populars pushed their members to make something close to B's. The cliques for Blacks pushed their members to ignore school all together.

The whole point of the book was that once children get to high school, it's the clique they are with that makes the difference in whether they succeed in getting a high school degree AND at what grade level they graduate, if they graduate.

Again, we as a society have become so wealthy that we have made it possible for our children to choose not to get an education. School reform is not going to work until we get the students to volunteer to get an education. I know, that seems like an obvious statement, but somehow the entire discussion about school reform has missed that point. Kids have to decide that getting an education is a good idea. All the increases in school spending mean nothing unless we can convince children that a good education is worth the bother.

When a child is moved from public school to private school, normally their grades go up. Why? Well, their clique has changed. From a set of people committed to partying, they are exposed to people dedicated to getting an education and going on to succeed in life.

I would point out that if money was the major indicator of school performance, then the Kansas City Independent School District should be the highest performing school in the nation, because court mandated school spending on the school district took up, at one time, 60% of the school funding in the entire state of Kansas. That's not the case. Kansas City ISD is toward the bottom as far as test scores.

Something has to change. We have to convince our children that volunteering to get an education is something they have to do. How do we do that?

I perceive that The Deprived has to be sold in the context of rebellion. The 1960's generation failed to get a better life through sex, drugs and Rock'n'Roll. I believe that there are a large number of teenagers who have come to the conclusion that the model that their parents have given them is a model of failure. If The Deprived can be sold as a way to declare to the world that the teenager is unhappy with their parents, then I can see where it might work.

Then there is the promiscuous sex. The idea behind promiscuous sex was that it would free women and show their independence. The show, Sex and the City, made the case that if a woman could bring out her inner slut, it would make her as strong as a man. That's great if all women view men the way the radical feminists do, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." It doesn't work that way. Too many women are waking up to the fact that even when they are in bed with a guy, they suffer loneliness. The behavior that screws up lives begins in high school.

Right now the driving force behind dating in high school is to have sex. There is some emotional baggage involved, but mostly it is dressing up the concept that dating leads to sex. Why is that a good idea? Can you prove to a teenager that being married is a better idea than going through life single and ultimately alone? I say that it should at least be tried. Despite what you have heard, sex inside marriage is better than outside marriage, because a married couple have the ability to practice. They also should be close enough that they can discuss sex in the context of needs and wants.

How do you say to a teenager, "You have to put off sex or you're going to be screwed."? I say that the emphasis has to be on showing examples of what happened when the adults in their life had a long string of lovers as opposed to what happened when they became married. What if you had speakers come in and talked about their real life experiences?

As I see it, The Deprived should push for educating teenagers in how to date with the goal of getting married instead of having sex. In addition, The Deprived should teach teenagers how to run a marriage. Then there is the education in how to get a job or how to start a business or go to college.

You could have successful people and failures come in and give presentations. Presentations would be in all aspects I have described above.

The only way I can see this working is if there is massive parties given by The Deprived. Nonalcoholic parties do not sound like much fun, but they could be, if planned extensively. As I said before, logistics is everything. Putting on massive, exciting parties once a week, would tax the energy of even a group of teenagers. The mechanics of putting together a party would train kids in how to undertake any large scale project. Plus it would be a way of raising money for scholarships and training for the members.

A club like this would be expensive, because it would have to promise scholarships for trade school or college plus grants and loans and support for people who wanted to start their own business. The alternative is probably more expensive. Kids that drop out of school or who do not get a good education or have a bad home life, have a tendency to become criminals. It's either encourage them to be productive citizens or pay for their room and board in prison.

Is there a Conservative solution to Social Security?

2006-05-15T19:10:00.000-07:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, May 15, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 5

What are you going to do when you retire? Do you believe that Social Security will be there when you do retire? Shouldn't you want to make sure that you will have enough money to retire?

Think about this... too many people believe that benefits from companies are a right. The company is backing you. The company is doing these great things for you. In actuality, the company when it gives you benefits is deciding for you how to spend your money. Benefits are part of your salary package. You pay taxes on benefits.

I think benefits are a stupid idea. Whether you know it or not benefits are a solution to a problem that no longer exists. During World War II, there were wage and price controls. Companies came up with the idea of benefits to get around the wage controls.

The problem companies are having is that the benefits have gotten out of hand. I draw you attention to General Motors. They my go bankrupt. One of the largest companies in the world may go under because its pension plan is part of the company instead of owned by the individual worker.

I think there should be a company to handle your insurance, pension and other financial matters. I keep coming up with rotten names for the project. Help me out. Go to my blog and tell me what I should call it, after you listen to what I am talking about.

The goal of this project is to establish a corporation to take the salary of a given person and get the best group insurance rates available for that person. The corporation should invest in a pension fund for the worker. Instead of the company employing the worker paying the withholding taxes, the benefits company should do that for the worker. If we could just get social security privatized, then a benefits corporation would take care of pensions instead of the government. With this idea for a financial company, an individual would have their pension safe from their employers going bankrupt and they could move their pension from employer to employer. It also allows a person working for a small business to have the advantages of working at a huge company. A large employer can get the best rates on insurance and other services. A large financial company like this benefits company could do that as well.

The major question becomes: how do you start a company like that? And I don't know the answer. I do know that the company would have to have in its bylaws that the company would be dedicated to the long term wealth accumulation for its clients. I know that the benefits company would have the advantage of keeping the costs of an employer down, because the costs of pensions and insurance would suddenly be off the books.

I have been wondering whether a benefits company could purchase pensions from other companies. I have been wondering whether the benefits company could contract to take over the insurance for companies that already have insurance as one of their benefits. The whole point of the benefits company would be to stand beside the worker and provide all the financial services they needed. Too many financial companies are dedicated to pleasing their stockholders. The thing is that the benefits Company wouldn't be in the pension business, nor the insurance business, nor even the banking business. It would be in the people business. The goal of the benefits company would be to get the best deal for its customers from the specialist companies that already exist. By pooling customers they could get the best group rates possible. There is a practice in banking called securitizing loans. It means that you pool the risk of loans and sell the interest accrued from a set of loans. I believe that there is a way of doing this using customers as well. The benefits company could even have insurance for a pension fund going under, so that their customers would not be impacted in that unlikely event. Maybe not.

I need to get some more information before I do anything about the benefits company project. Do you want to help me out? Do you want to help found a corporation that would make a major impact on future generations, then go out to my blog and make some comments and suggestions and help me get things started.

Did you know that there was a poll taken and people under 35 were asked whether they thought they would get their social security? They also asked whether the same people believed in UFO's. More people believed in UFO's than believed that Social Security would pay them what they put in or more.

Something has to be done about Social Security going under. The lament "Someone should do something about that" should be met with "I'll try to do something myself. I won't wait for some politician to decide by polling data what needs to be done."

Why do you think we are at war with the Irreconcilables of radical Islam?

2006-05-15T19:05:00.000-07:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, May 15, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 6

The major questions I want you to answer for me is: Why do you think we are at war with the Irreconcilables of radical Islam?

My response is based on a web site I saw.

I am not asking you why we went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am not asking you whether we should have gone to Iraq and Afghanistan. I am asking you as to what you think the root causes of 9/11 and the War on Terror.

Let me make my case as to what I think the root causes are.

By my standards the root causes of 9/11 and the War on Terror are because the Irreconcilables of Radical Islam are caught in a double bind. The Qu'ran is inerrant. The Qu'ran cannot be wrong. My assessment of Reality is that the Qu'ran tells Muslims unequivocally that Muslims deserve to be rulers of the world. The Qu'ran also says that Islam is the only true faith. The Qu'ran says that to be Muslim is to be the best that humanity can offer. On the other hand, Muslims throughout the world are not part of the dominate cultures of the world. Almost all Muslim countries are poor and their people cannot hope to get better. How can the Qu'ran be mistaken, because it is surely not wrong?

The Irreconcilables of Radical Islam are fighting to defend God's honor. They look at their plight and cannot admit that their problems are caused by their own failings. The Qu'ran says that if they are good Muslims, they will have all the good things in life. That is not what is happening. Their internal world says one thing. Their external world says another. They desperately want their internal world, the world of their dreams and their faith, to match the outside world.

In short, we are presently at war with a set of people who believe that their religion is so great that everyone else has to either convert, die, become a second class citizen or become a slave to members of Islam. The members of radical Islam are quite willing to behead, torture, maim and burn anyone who disagrees with them. Why is that correct behavior? Why are so many people condemning the behavior of the United States and not condemning the behavior of the Irreconcilables?

I have to accept that there are people in Islam who do not support the Irreconcilables. It sure doesn't look that way, because very few members of Islam are speaking up against the Irreconcilables. Why does that make sense? As near as I can understand, members of Islam, even in this country, are afraid to speak up, because they fear being hurt by their co-religionists. Freedom is NOT free. If the members of Islam refuse to condemn the behavior of the terrorists, then they appear to condone their behavior. If they cannot condemn the behavior because they are afraid, then are they truly free?

In addition there are a large number of American academics who seek to excuse the beheadings, torture, maiming and burning anyone who disagrees with Islam. In fact there is a web site called the Daily Kos which is part of the mainstream of the Democratic party. When three contractors working for Haliburton were killed, burned and their bodies hung up from a bridge. The editor of Daily Kos said, "Screw 'em. They're mercenaries and deserved to die." No, I'm not kidding you. The ensuing comments on the web site were even uglier. Why do people condemn the United States for bad behavior, yet applaud the bad behavior of the Irreconcilables or at best ignore it? How many letter writing campaign have been launched to protest the treatment of hostages held by the Irreconcilables in Iraq? You know, maybe they've tried that... I wonder what happened when those rats in human form got those letters, did they die laughing or what?

People have compared the insurgents in Iraq to our military in the Revolutionary War. The problem I have with that is that the terrorists in Iraq wish to establish a tyrannical state. They have proclaimed their intentions. Our Founding Fathers never said any such thing and subsequent events proved that they did NOT set up a tyranny despite what some would say.

In one context I believe the people who compare the Revolutionary War in this country to the terrorists in Iraq are right. During the Revolutionary War, only about 10% of the people in the Thirteen Colonies were in favor of full independence from the British Crown. If the Revolutionary War had gone the other way, most people in the colonies would have proclaimed their love of the British crown and gone on. Same way with Islam. If radical Islam triumphs worldwide, almost every Muslim will make a show of dancing in the street either figuratively or literally. If you're listening to this, you're saying that there is no damn way that radical Islam could ever triumph over the West.

You're mistaken.

There's two scenarios where I can see Islam winning. By winning I mean, that the Caliphate comes about and radical Islam takes over the rest of the world. The Caliphate is a political unit that should by their standards stretch from Algeria to Indonesia right now. They cannot quite understand why it does not. The first stage of their project requires that the Caliphate in fact does stretch from present day Algeria to Indonesia. After that, then the rest of the people's of the world will become part of the Caliphate.

In the first scenario, radical Islam gets enough room to create a viral agent that kills off 60% of the human race. From the ashes of world civilization would arise a Islamic state like no other in history. The leaders of such a political entity could reasonably proclaim that God had vanquished the nonbelievers and they would now rule forever. This one seems kind of unlikely at the present time, because it would take a nation state to fund such a project. I know, the Russians spent a gazillion bucks trying to come up with a delivery system for a biological weapon. They failed.

Times have changed. The Irreconcilables just have to infect a couple of hundred of their followers and have them shuttle between all the major airports in the world infecting travelers. They wouldn't even have to tell the poor nutjobs that they were infected with a deadly virus. The end result would be that a huge number of people would die.

You might say that the members of radical Islam could not possibly think that they could achieve their goals doing it that way. You are not following what the Irreconcilables say in their own language. They REALLY want to kill the infidels. You might suppose that they would worry about killing lots of Muslims. Nope. The Irreconcilables do not think there ARE any REAL Muslims except them. I draw your attention to the fact that too many of the dead in Iraq ARE Muslims. The Jordanians just now noticed that. It kind of upset them.

All it would take is if the United States were to let up pressure enough for the Irreconcilables to catch their breath and go forward with this project. In the chaotic environment that exists now in the Middle East, such a project would be revealed or someone would make a mistake and release the virus too soon.

If we ever let up, then this project could go forward.

The second scenario is where they take over Europe and little by little take over the world using the resources they acquire in the conquest of Europe. That scenario seems more likely every day. The Europeans are dying out. To have a breakeven point in your population, you have to have 2.1 births per female on average. Europe has an average birth rate of 1.7 per female and falling. At the same time the number of immigrants from the Islamic World is increasing and they have more children than the Europeans. Why couldn't a Muslim party come to power, declare the Caliphate in Europe and like Hitler cancel all future elections? The populace is disarmed in Europe. The have no second amendment right. What is to stop the Muslims from taking over? Their army? Not too put too fine a line on it, but the armies of Europe are unionized. They do not spend much on them. How can they protect their citizens from the one man, one vote, one time scenario? I had thought the Muslims would initiate this scenario about 2050, but the car-b-ques of the last few months have made me think that Europe will lose its freedom to the Muslims in the 2010-2020 period. I hope to God no one on our side of the ocean decides we should bail them out one more time.

Oh, there IS one thing that I think people on both the Left and the Right should understand. People on the Right have been REALLY upset with Bush because he continues to call Islam, the Religion of Peace. I mean, too many on the Right consider that name for Islam to be ludicrous, because they can point to Shariah's demand for beheadings for murder, hand removal for thievery, lashings for all manner of crimes, stonings for adultery and the ever-popular religious backed wife beating. All I can say is that you are missing something about how jihad is declared under Shariah.

The radical Islamists defines jihad as anything they want it to be. Under a closer inspection of the Qu'ran, you should know that jihad can only be declared when Muslims are being oppressed. By saying that Islam is a Religion of Peace, Bush has cut the legs out from under radical Islam by making it hard for them to say that the United states government is oppressing the Muslims in this country. Bin Laden wanted the U.S. to oppress domestic Muslims after 9/11, so they would awaken from their slumber in this country, rise up and overthrow our government.

Admittedly, so-called Muslim civil rights groups have found numerous cases of Muslims being oppressed in this country, but they have had to REALLY work at it and be REALLY hypersensitive to make the case that Islam is being oppressed in this country. My point is that Bush is a canny man. He has made it harder for a fifth column to form in this country. He has not eliminated the possibility of a fifth column, but he has made it harder for Islamic religious leaders to declare a general uprising in this country without them looking stupid in front of their members.

I find that kind of fascinating, because people over at Little Green Footballs have a hard time grasping that nuanced position. I know, I know, that's a stupid joke. Nuanced positions are by definition, French and Liberal positions, but it does not change the fact that Bush was confronted with the possibility of a general uprising of Muslims in this country and he made a decision to calm the waters for the moment. I find that to be a good strategy given the minimal cost to us by simply mouthing the silly phrase, Religion of Peace.

The only way we can lose is if we attempt to appease the Irreconcilables. If we modify our behavior to suit their tastes, not our own, then we will have lost.

Too many people in this country do not believe that we are at war with an implacable foe. The thinking on the Left is that we can appease the Irreconcilables. I think that is a stupid idea.

People have made the comparison between the War on Terror and the Cold War or even the run up to World War II. Unfortunately it is not exactly the same. The destruction of the fascist causes in Europe, could be done by force of arms. The destruction of Communism was possible because Communism doesn't work as an economic system.

How do you get an entire religion to accept that portions of their holy book are incorrect? I mean, under the Qu'ran, there is adequate passages to support the position that the West is decadent and must be destroyed. People who come out and say that the Irreconcilables are a fringe group with little in the way of scripture to back up their position are silly.

In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met with the ambassador of Lybia to Great Britain. The ambassador's reasons for attacking American ships in the Mediterranean were very similar to Osama bin Laden's reasons for attacking us today, except the representative of the Barbary pirates was more sure of his position than Osama bin Laden. The same logic applied. We either paid tribute to our betters or our ships would be attacked.

What we're seeing today in the terrorist attacks from the Irreconcilables is not a fringe position. It is mainstream Islamic thought. The cartoon jihad has proved that to any who wants to be convinced.

There are a huge number of people in this country who do NOT want to be convinced that the Irreconcilables mean what they say. I have heard various theories as to why the Left has adopted the position that the Irreconcilables can be placated, but the people who believe that are deluded. The Irreconcilables cannot appeased.

Again, I want you to go out to my blog and answer the question: Why do you think we are at war with the Irreconcilables of radical Islam? I have told you why I think we are fighting them. Please tell me why you think we are fighting them.

You might ask what this has to do with social activism. How can you have social activism if there is a chance that our Civilization will be wiped out?

Why is George Bush hated? Just askin'.

2006-05-15T18:58:00.000-07:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, May 15, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 7

The big problem I have with the Left right now is that I do not understand why the Left hates President George Bush. I would really like you to come out to my blog and tell me why you hate Bush. I can't figure this out. Very few on the Right have been able to understand the fury that Bush elicits in the Left. We on the Right have started calling the condition, Bush Derangement Syndrome, B.D.S.

It looks like to me that to the Left, George Bush is one OR all of the below:

o Bush is an idiot. He is so stupid that he has to ask Karl Rove to make all his decisions for him.

o Bush is a devil. He can cause hurricanes to come in and destroy Louisiana and in the process wipe out the Democratic Party's stranglehold on New Orleans.

o Bush is the same as Hitler. I mean, Bush has rounded up his political enemies and has killed them. Or rather he wants to round them up and kill them. Or rather he refutes his political enemies and makes them look stupid, so that makes him Hitler. Let me get back to you on that one.

As near as I can tell, BDS causes the Left to overestimate and underestimate Bush and then be surprised when he does what he says he was going to do. Why does that make sense? If you are going to oppose someone, shouldn't you be able to articulate a reason why you opposing them, besides, "I hate the guy."? Just asking.

Let me tell you why I like George Bush.

Some years ago when Bush was Governor of Texas, some idiot wandered into a church in Fort Worth and started shooting people. One of the church members stood up, stared the guy in the eye and said, "You can kill me, but you cannot kill my faith." They stood there staring at each other, then the gunman lowered his gun, walked over, sat down in a pew and shot himself.

A media circus was convened. Traumatized church members had to put up with crazy media people hounding them with crazy question. George Bush heard about the tragedy. He got in his car in Austin and drove to Fort Worth. He showed up and started walking around, kind of scoping things out. He did not arrive with big fanfare. He did not make statements showing how great George Bush was. He was offered the podium and did not take it.

No, he was there to make sure the government didn't screw up. He was there to witness. He was not there to make it appear that the story was about George Bush.

A little while later, there was a memorial service for the dead. George Bush showed up. He did not make speeches. He did not make the memorial about him. He simply let people know that he was there and that he was there to help by bearing witness.

This meant to me that Bush is a humble man who does not need the limelight. In subsequent years I have never seen George Bush grab the limelight to make himself look big.

Another story, George Bush flew in and landed on the aircraft carrier Lincoln. The Left labeled it as a stunt. It meant nothing.

To the military, it meant that George Bush has courage. Ask any Marine who has had to sit in the second seat of an aircraft doing an aircraft landing. It is one of the most frightening experiences you can have.

The plan starts out at about 10000 feet. The aircraft carrier is a dot in a sea of blue. As the plane comes in the aircraft carrier gets bigger and bigger and suddenly it looks like a ten story building. When the aircraft touches down, it hits the trip wire and it feels like it crashed. In the back of both occupant's minds is the worry that there can always be a sudden gust of wind that will cause the aircraft to hit the back of the ship. It happens every once in a while.

Bush was frightened by that landing, but he did it anyway to honor the military. He gave his speech declaring the war in Iraq over. Afterwards in the galley, he cut turkey slices for the crew. The symbolism was, 'As you serve me, so I serve you'. How many leaders in this world would make such a gesture and mean it?

And then there is the story of Bush showing up in Baghdad for Thanksgiving. The Left called that a grandstand play as well. It meant nothing.

To the military it showed he had courage, because Baghdad was still a hot zone by most people's standards. An aircraft had been fired upon taking off from that same airfield. He gave his speech and then wandered around talking to the military present. During the process, he lifted up a turkey and showed it to the camera. The media went nuts over that. Screaming that it was a horrible thing to do. To me, it just meant that Bush was showing the parents that their kids were being fed okay. I found out later that no one actually eats the turkeys that are prepared like that. They're show turkeys. That's why Bush could not cut the turkey that time. He stood in the mess line and filled plates for the men and women of that ship. Again, 'As you serve me, so I serve you'.

Bush was there for many reasons, but mostly I think it was to determine whether the soldiers were discouraged. He wanted to find out how morale was. I am absolutely convinced that, if the troops were telling him that the cause was lost, then Bush would have backed out of Iraq. If the man is an arrogant swaggering person, then why doesn't it show these stories?

Then there are the stories of Bush meeting with the kin of the fallen soldiers. These are private visits. There is no limelight involved. Why is that?

Even Cindy Shehan got a private visit with Bush. Oh, wait, you probably didn't hear about that. The protest in the ditch in Crawford was Mother Shehan trying for a second private visit with Bush. Bush had met with her privately about a year earlier. He wasn't going to do it a second time. It served no purpose.

All right. I want you to go out my blog and tell me why you hate Bush or attempt to rebut the stories I have given. Again, that is mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com where mastercraftsmon is spelled mastercraftsmon.

And no, this has nothing to do with social activism. I'm just curious as to why people on the Left hate Bush. It makes no sense to me. I'm really curious.

Well, people that about wraps it up for the night. If after all my exhortations, I get no comments on the blog, I am going to have to do something extreme. I am not real interested in doing it, but we shall see.

Open Air Live on KEOS 89.1FM College Station for April 28, 2006 2-4pm

2006-04-30T05:52:00.000-07:00

Playlist for KEOS 89.1FM Open Air Live for April 28, 2006

So from 2-4pm I played some International Music. Except some of it wasn't. The Native American is of course from the US and Gullah is of course from the islands off the coast of South Carolina. The Playlist was:
Artist or Band[Song]Name of CD
Tomas San Miguel[Pleyades](Basque)Lezao
Marta Sebestyen[Teremtes](Hungary)The Best of Marta Sebestyen
Sorten Muid[As Stars Up High](Denmark)Mark II
Steve Shehan&Baly Othmani[Assarouf](Africa)Assarout
Seydu[Dance of the Night](Sierra Leone)Freetown
Samputu[Aliokoa](Rwanda)Testimony from Rwanda
Samite[Ndere](Uganda)Sillia Musango
No Name Given[Dance of the Angels](Laos)Music from Thailand&Laos
Sisters[Nearer My God to Me](Native American)Oneida Ireaquois Hymns
Joanne Shenandoah[Prophecy Song](Native American)Peace of Power
William Horncloud[If You Get Lonesome](Native American)Rabbit Dance; Songs of the Lakota
Joanne Shenadoah&Lawrence Laughing[Across the Sky](Native American)Oenda (Native American Songs of Life)
Alex E. Smith&Cheevers Toppah[Reflections](Native American)Intonation
Joanne Shenandoah[Tell Me Your Dream](Native American)Covenant
Tiinesha Begaye[Tradition Lives Forever](Native American)Rhythm of Love
Johnny Mike[Four Songs](Native American)Hear My Prayers
Shoghaken Ensemble[Tamzara](Armenia)Traditional Dances of Armenia
Shoghaken Ensemble[Anush Knik](Armenia)Armenian Lullabies
Sawt E Atlas[Ness](Morocco)Donia
Seba[Ben Ali](Algeria)Ewal Limentation Generale
M.R. Shajarian&K. Kalnor[Desert](Iran)Nght Silence Desert
Mariem Smalls&The halleluja Singers[Cap'n](Gullah)Carry Me Home

Playlist for KEOS 89.1FM for Another Thursday

2006-04-28T05:11:00.000-07:00

Playlist for KEOS 89.1FM, Thursday, April 27, 2006 for Open Air Live

It's almost impossible to get people to work during the day at KEOS. I took over the 2pm-4pm slot for some reason, basically waiting for the calvary to arrive. It hasn't.
The playlist for Thursday was:

Artist or Band[Song]Name of CD
Michael McDonald[Sweet Freedom]Music from the motion picture "Running Scared"
Stan Swiniarski[They Called me An American]Mexico
Ronny Cox[Trash Meets the Cash]Cowboy Savant
Stan Swiniarski[It Ain't a Party]Mexico
Feeway Bill[Running Scared]Music from the motion picture "Running Scared"
Ronny Cox[Canyons]Cowboy Savant
Stan Swiniarski[Overnight Sensation]Mexico
New Edition[Once in a Lifetime Groove]Music from the motion picture "Running Scared"
Heather Alexander[Storyteller]Wanderlust
Davie Paton[The Bonny Blue Bonnets]Fragments
Heather Alexander[Faerie Queen]Wanderlust
Davie Paton[Loch Lomond]Fragments
Cheap Trick[Dream Police]
Survivor[Eye of the Tiger]
Van Halen[Dreams]
Mr. Mister[Kyree]
Toto[Africa]
The Moody Blues[Your Wildest Dreams]
Chicago[Stay the Night]
Rod Stewart[Forever Young]
Pierce Pettis[A Mountaineer is Always Free]
Starship[We Built This City]
Hall&Oates[Kiss on My List]

It was a pretty good show. These are all songs I like.

My Book, The Dark Prince

2006-04-24T18:23:00.000-07:00

I wrote a book, The Dark Prince.

About two years ago, I became very ill and nearly died. I started having fever dreams. They were very vivid. They dealt with a man called Green Sky.

A green sky is a harbinger. It is a warning. When the sky turns green, there a fair to middling chance that there is a tornado in the area. The problem was that I couldn't write a book about Green Sky.

My character, Green Sky, was a callous, uncaring man. The ultimate warrior... An unfeeling killing machine. A man quite willing to kill in the name of Civilization. I wanted to write about him, but could not. I simply couldn't get inside his head. A man that close to breaking would view the world in a very strange way. Right and wrong would warp and morph into many different things.

The novel, Green Sky, has not been written. Yet.

I could write a book about child abuse. Not because I was an abused child but because I could empathize with someone who was abused as a child. I called it, The Dark Prince.

Our society has spent too much time on victimhood. Too many people wish to claim victimhood because it somehow absolves them of all their sins. Or so it seems.

My character, John Jones, has been in 47 foster homes. His mother laid open his back with a electric cord when he was five. She had been selling him to homosexuals for sex in order to buy drugs. She had starved him into submission to force him to have sex with these guys by confining him to a closet. After the foster care system got him, I had him be in a foster home where the nutjob beat him with a whip. In another home he was subjected to torture and buried alive. All through this he is given the opportunity to scream victimhood and blame everyone else for his problems. I mean, after having this many problems, he was entitled, BUT he refused.

Most foster care kids believe that they ARE victims. And at the same time, they believe themselves ultrapowerful. I mean, All the troubles in their lives are caused by their action. Their parents break up. It was their fault. If they are beaten, it was because of something they did. I know doesn't make any sense, but that is how things are for quite a few foster kids.

He adopted a librarian as his second mother. He loves her as a mother and she councils him as a mother would concil a son. She gives him the books necessary for him to adopt a different frame of reference than victimhood. Why anyone would reject victimhood when they truly WERE a victim was kind of an interesting idea to me. Why would a child in foster care listen to an adult not their caregiver? Don't know. That is what I had to have for the novel to work out the way I wanted.

What I tried to do in the novel was beat up the kid mentally. I wanted to show how people with real character react when they have something bad happens to them. Throughout the novel odd and crazy things drop in his lap and he has to deal with the situations.

The novel opens with him grieving for the death of the Librarian. A frighteningly scary man, Green Sky, shows up and they play chess. Green Sky takes the John Jones as his apprentice. Green Sky is a mystic warrior. John Jones is to be his replacement.

What I wanted to do was to show what happens to people when chaos actually enters their lives and swirls around them.

What I had hoped was that my audience for this show would help me edit the book. I had hoped that people would go out to my blog and then on to my book and read the book and give me comments and suggestions about the book. No one has. No one has gone out to my blog and the book has sat out there on my web site for two years while I have dithered.

Ah, go out to mastercraftsmon.blogspot.com and catch the link to my novel, The Dark Prince, if you are interested. Each chapter is about seven pages long. There is a reason for that length, but it is kind of silly.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Index

2006-03-31T18:50:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Index

Segment 1: How the pacifism of Desmond Doss was an inspiration

Segment 2: How the pacifism of the Christian Peacemaker Teams is really street theater.

Segment 3: Post-modernist thought as applied to the Christian Peacemaker Teams.

Segment 4: Discuss an article on DailyKos.

Segment 5: Discuss an article by Bernard Weiner on democratic underground.

Segment 6: Discuss a campaign on moveon.org to censure Bush.

NOTE: I do not claim that all of the above is original. Where I have been able to do so, I have given links. If I have plagerized someone else's works without attribution, please give me the link and I shall make an update.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 1

2006-03-31T18:47:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 1

We are having our Spring fund drive. Call in and make a pledge. I shall play some music and take your pledge. I have no engineers or someone to take the phone, so that is what needs to be done. Don't be shy. Call right now at 779-5367 or 779-KEOS or donate securely at www.keos.org.

Remember that I am but a voice from the velvet black calling to you across the gulf of our mutual incomprehension.

A hero died last Thursday in Piedmont, Alabama. He was 87. He had lived a rich, full life and is mourned by many. When he came home from World War II, he spent most of the last 60 years in the tiny mountain community of Rising Fawn, Georgia. Burial will take place on Monday, April 3, at 11 a.m. at the Chattanooga National Cemetery.

Desmond T. Doss was a devout member of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, he believed that the Bible said, "Thou Shalt Not Kill", and that was the end of it. He would not eat meat after seeing a chicken flopping around with its head cut off. In fact, he was a bit a klutz, because he was always bumping into things and hurting himself. Thus he seemed an unlikely candidate to become a war hero.

In the run up to World War II, the draft was re-instituted. Doss, at the time, was working as a joiner at a shipyard in Newport News, Virginia. This was considered an essential industry to the military so he had no worries of being drafted. With the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, he knew he would be drafted if he did not enlist, so that is exactly what he chose to do. Enlistment meant that he might be able to choose his job in the military.

His minister went with him to establish his status as a non-combatant. The officer in charge told him there was no such thing, but that he could register as a conscientious objector. Doss said he was not a conscientious objector because he would gladly serve his country, wear a uniform, salute the flag, and help with the war effort. He would gladly help tend sick or hurt people any day, but he would not carry a gun because he believed all killing was wrong. Finally the enlistment officer convinced Doss to accept the 1-A-O Conscientious Objector classification, so he could join the army without fear of court martial.

On April 1, 1942 he was inducted into the U.S. Army and headed to Ft. Jackson in South Carolina for basic training. He had begun dating Dorothy Schutte and they had fallen in love, but they decided that they should wait until after the war to get married. Before he left Dorothy, gave him a small pocketsize Bible. Many times in the days ahead, that Bible would prove to be his lone source of comfort and inspiration.

23-year-old Desmond Doss entered service as a medic for the 77th Infantry Division. From the beginning, the other men in his company made fun of Doss for his beliefs. Even though he worked long, hard hours to make up for not working on Saturday, the men cursed, ridiculed, and taunted him. Each night as he knelt beside his bunk to pray, the men swore at him and threw their boots at him. When Doss quietly read his small Bible, as he often did, the men cursed him even more. One man even went so far as to tell him that he would personally kill Doss when they got into combat.

You have to understand their position. Most of them were draftees. Frightened of dying like any man would be. The one thing a soldier must count on is that his comrade will die for him and kill for him. Doss's faith seemed to mean that he would do neither, thus he was a threat to their survival.

Not only did the men not like Doss, even though he did nothing to them, but the Army just did not know what to do with a soldier who would not work on Saturday, who would not carry a gun, and who did not eat meat. At one point, his commanding officer tried to initiate a Section Eight (unfit for military service) discharge, but Doss vehemently fought the move, saying he really did want to serve his country, he just did not want to kill. He remained in the Army to the great displeasure of most of his officers and fellow soldiers.

His unit was deployed in the Pacific as part of the island hopping campaign. Land, take the island, move on to the next unpronounceable island and repeat the process. In July of 1944 on the island of Guam, Doss began to prove his courage and compassion for the very men who had taunted, belittled, and even threatened him by braving enemy fire to pull his wounded comrades from the line of fire and render aid. He received a Bronze Star for his heroism. During the battle to take Leyte in the Philippines during October of 1944, Doss proved his courage over and over. Without regard for his own life he would help the wounded to safety.

In one case, something strange happened. Doss ran out onto the battlefield to retrieve a wounded soldier. Some of his company looked on in horror as they saw a Japanese sniper take aim at Doss as he helped the wounded man. They could do nothing to stop the sniper because other soldiers were in their line of fire. Miraculously, the sniper did not fire. Years later a missionary in Japan told this story. After the service, a Japanese man told the missionary the sniper could have been him. He remembered having a soldier in his sites, but he could not pull the trigger. Bushido maybe. A warrior recognizes courage, when he sees it.

Okinawa came. Okinawa killed more of our troops than any of the other battles of the Pacific. It was a horrendous campaign because by that time both sides had hard bitten veterans who were ready to die for their cause.

By now, Doss's fellow soldiers were used to his reading the Bible and praying, so it did not seem unusual when, on that April 29th morning in 1945, he suggested that they might want to pray. They were facing a sheer 400-foot cliff that split the island of Okinawa known as the Maeda Escarpment. It would be necessary to attack and capture this area. The men of Company B bowed their heads as Doss offered a prayer for safety. Then they began to struggle up the sheer cliff face.

His unit captured the 400-foot Maeda Escarpment in an incredible sweep in which not one man was killed and only one minor injury was sustained. When a photographer arrived to capture the moment and asked how they pulled it off, Doss' company commander answered, "Doss prayed!"

However on May 5th the tide turned against the Americans as the Japanese launched a huge counterattack. Enemy fire raked Company B and almost immediately over 50 men fell wounded. The remaining troops who were able, retreated back down to the base of the escarpment. Left at the top of the cliff were the wounded, the Japanese, and Desmond T. Doss.

For the next five hours, while his wounded comrades fought back their attackers, Doss began to lower man after man to safety down the face of the cliff using little more than a tree stump and a rope. Doss said that he just kept praying that the Lord would let him rescue one more man. No one knows for sure how many men Doss lowered to safety that day. The campaign continued for Company B. The Maeda Escarpment was retaken. Day leached into day.

On May 21st, the Americans again were under fire while Doss remained in the open to help a wounded soldier. He and three other soldiers had crawled into a hole to wait for the cover of darkness to escape when a grenade was thrown into their hole. The other three men jumped out to safety but the grenade blew up just as Doss stepped on it. Did I mention that the man was a klutz? Miraculously he did not lose his leg but he sustained many wounds. He did not want to endanger anyone else so he bandaged his own wounds and waited for the breaking of the dawn for help to arrive.

As he was being carried off the field they passed another critically wounded soldier. Doss rolled off the litter and told the medics to take the other man. He joined another wounded soldier and together they started to hobble off while supporting each other. Doss had his arm across the other man's neck when he felt a bullet slam into his arm. It shattered Doss upper arm, which in turn, saved the other man's life.

On the way out to a hospital ship offshore, Doss discovered that he had lost the Bible his fiancé, Dorothy, had given him. He sent word asking if the men could keep an eye out for it. On the hospital ship, it was determined that Doss had the million dollar wound and he was shipped back to the States. The word passed from man to man, and an entire battalion of battle weary warriors combed the battlefield until Doss' Bible was found. A sergeant carefully dried it out and mailed it to Doss. Months later it arrived at his home in the United States. Doss would spend a total of six years in hospitals as a consequence of his wounds and a bout with tuberculosis.

The military determined that this medic, whom no one had wanted in the Army, had personally saved 100 lives. They wished to honor him with a medal. In debriefing, Doss said it could not have been more than 50. Because of Doss' humble estimate, when the citation for his Medal was written, they split the difference and he was credited with saving the lives of 75 of his fellow soldiers. On October 12, 1945, Desmond Doss, was invited to the White House to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor from President Harry S. Truman for his courageous service on May 5, 1945 - the first noncombatant to ever receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Incidentally, May 5, 1945 was a Saturday, Sabbath for the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Sometimes a man, if he is honorable, must work on the Sabbath.

Most of that reading was from an article by MATTHEW C SOPER with major contributions by MARK REIMAN and information contained in the book Desmond Doss - In God's Care, by Frances Doss, copyright 1998, The College Press, Collegedale, TN.

A documentary was put out in 2004 based on the life of Desmond Doss called Conscientious Objector. There is to be a major motion picture about him sometime soon. I wonder whether they will be able to capture the courage of the man. We shall see, shall we not.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 2

2006-03-31T18:41:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 2

We are having our Spring fund drive. Call in and make a pledge. I shall play some music and take your pledge. I have no engineers or someone to take the phone, so that is what needs to be done. Don't be shy. Call right now at 779-5367 or 779-KEOS or donate securely at www.keos.org.

On the same day as Desmond T. Doss died, three members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams were freed in Baghdad by a force of American, British and Iraqi warriors. The Christian Peacemaker Teams are a set of pacifists who perceive that the United States should end its occupation of Iraq, because we are causing suffering over there and accomplishing no good. In their initial press release the group made it clear that had the United States not been in Iraq, they would not have been kidnaped. Only after much bad Public Relations did the group think to thank the military for freeing their people. It was kind of a lukewarm thanks at that.

There were four members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams when the initial kidnaping occurred on November 26 of last year. One of the four, American Tom Fox, was tortured and murdered. His body was dumped by the side of the road on March 9. It looks like to me that the Christian Peacemaker Teams refuses to condemn the Irreconcilables for killing their comrade.

As near as I can tell from what they have said, the Christian Peacemaker Teams believe that there is no such thing as a just war, thus the U.S. is doing something immoral. Under Christian theology, if you observe one neighbor attacking another and do nothing, then you are immoral. The split comes as to what to do to stop the violence. The basis for the just war doctrine is that there must be no other way to stop great evil being done before you can use violence yourself. The other alternative is to witness to the evil ones and change their hearts while comforting the oppressed and giving them the strength to endure their oppression.

The Christian Peacemaker Teams appear to be another street theater group. I may be mistaken, but they seem to be a very narcissistic group dedicated to making themselves feel good about trying to accomplish something without actually accomplishing anything. Evil exists. The CPT has explicitly said that they think that "the illegal occupation of Iraq by multinational forces" was the "root cause" of the kidnaping.

They have sided with the Palestinians and perceive that the Jews are the oppressors because of the balance of power which favors the Jews. Because the Jews are unwilling to kill noncombatants, the Christian Peacemaker Teams can constantly get in the way of the Jews trying to defend themselves against the suicide bombers without getting hurt. They do not seem to be interested in stopping the Palestinians from blowing up Jews.

In Iraq, the Christian Peacemaker Teams assume that the Irreconcilables are the victims of American imperialism. Again, they are not trying to stop the Irreconcilables from killing Americans. They have been in Iraq off and on since 2002. Before the Iraqi War, they attempted to stop the war by placing themselves between bombs and structures that the U.S. would likely bomb. Now their major focus is freeing the Irreconcilables who have been jailed by the U.S. military, documenting American abuses of the Iraqi population and effecting a total withdrawal from the Middle East by the U.S. At the same time they are REALLY interested in getting a huge amount of face time in front of the cameras. As I said they are into street theater.

Wait. I told this a while back, but I don't think you remember it. There was this guy in college in 1968 and his roommate was going to go down to Washington, D.C., and demonstrate against the Vietnam War. They were going to march on the Pentagon. That was a stupid thing to do, because the Pentagon has no power to change public policy. So this guy told his roommate that he was wasting his time. In fact, he was not doing his cause any good by blocking the roads into Washington or laying down in the street. The roommate said that he did not care. He wanted to prove that he, the roommate, was morally superior to everyone else by doing this project. Are you getting this? The goal of the project was to prove that the participants were morally superior, not to accomplish anything. When you do that, you are doing street theater.

Today, the Christian Peacemaker Teams are a set of people who get out in front of the cameras and prove to all their friends that they are morally superior to just about everyone else. Their goal is to make their friends respect them. Their goal is not to accomplish much of anything. They are, in fact, a set of street actors, not really activists. It just looks like they are activists bent on some goal. If you are an activist, then you have to have an achievable goal. The CPT doesn't really.

I bring up Desmond Doss and the Christian Peacemaker Teams as a way of showing how the times have changed. In World War II, it was obvious to anyone who had sense that the Germans, Italians and the Japanese were bent on imposing totalitarian rule on every person on Earth using violence. The CPT and our Liberal establishment cannot seem to condemn the Irreconcilables for their unseemly habit of hacking people's heads off and dropping their bodies beside the road.

Desmond Doss felt it was his duty to stop that from happening in some small way. He was able to determine who the forces of evil were and try to stop them. His pacifism was a private thing. He would not kill, but he did not demand that others believe as he believed. He could see that violence had to be used to stop the evil from occurring.

The Christian Peacemaker Teams believe that there is no such thing as a bad peace or a good war. They want to impose their pacifism on everyone they meet. Their position gets kind of mushy after that. It appears to me that only the United States and other Western powers come in for their wrath. I don't know for sure. They and many on the Left have come to the conclusion that the Irreconcilables can be placated and appeased. If the United States would just withdraw from the world stage, then everything would be just great. The problem with that assertion is that the Irreconcilables of radical Islam will not go away, nor will they stop until every person on this planet who disagrees with them has been killed, enslaved, converted to Islam or made a second class citizen in a worldwide caliphate. For some reason this does not seem to penetrate to groups like the Christian Peacemaker Teams.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair put it this way in a speech this week, insurgency forces "play our own media with a shrewdness that would be the envy of many a political party. Every act of carnage adds to the death toll. But somehow, it serves to indicate our responsibility for disorder, rather than the act of wickedness that causes it. For us, so much of our opinion believes that what was done in Iraq in 2003 was so wrong that it is reluctant to accept what is plainly right now." Think about that for a moment. The war in Iraq was started incorrectly by too many on the Left. It thus follows that the outcome of the war must be so evil that the freedom that the Iraqis have right now must be sacrificed to atone for our getting rid of Saddam Hussein incorrectly.

By my standards pacifism should be an individual choice. Desmond Doss made the Choice that he would not allow evil to grow, but he personally would not use violence to stop it. The Christian Peacemaker Teams are so convinced if the rectitude of their position, that they are willing to allow evil to grow as long as the West does not use violence to stop its growth. If the Christian Peacemaker Teams were condemning the Irreconcilables as harshly as they condemn the West, then I would have some respect for their position. They are not. They excuse the barbaric behavior of the Irreconcilables, because they agree that the West has treated them badly. Or so that seems. I may be mistaken, but it surely looks like the Christian Peacemaker Teams agree that the invasion of Iraq was so wrong that nothing can make it right except by our pulling out and letting the Iraqis twist in the wind.

The Iraqi government are not happy with the CPT. The position of the Iraqi government is that the CPT has sided with the Irreconcilables against the majority of Iraqis. You see what has gotten everyone upset is that the CPT was slow to thank the soldiers who saved them and then the freed hostages dumped on the multinational forces and THEN would not allow the military a chance to debrief them on their time being held hostage. If they had allowed the military to debrief them, maybe other hostages could be freed. The CPT takes the position that they will not help free other hostages because violence against the hostage takers might result. Wouldn't want to be the cause of those benign head hackers being hurt, now would we?

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 3

2006-03-31T18:04:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 3

We are having our Spring fund drive. Call in and make a pledge. I shall play some music and take your pledge. I have no engineers or someone to take the phone, so that is what needs to be done. Don't be shy. Call right now at 779-5367 or 779-KEOS or donate securely at www.keos.org.

All right. What's all that have to do with anything you might ask? Everyone knows that things have changed since World War II. I mean, our society has become more nuanced. The certainties of yesterday have been swept away by a gnawing fear that nothing is as it seems.

The basis of our society up until the 1960's was that we would debate an issue and then determine from the debate what the truth of the topic was and then go forward based on the acceptance of that understanding of that what that truth was. The reason we did that was that conventional wisdom allowed us to avoid getting hurt. Starting about the 1960's it was found that you could believe the stupidest, most idiotic things in the world and still not have to suffer for your beliefs. I am not talking about religious beliefs. I am talking about beliefs as to what works in fixing problems in society.

Right now we have implemented policies that do not work, but for one reason or another we cannot stop doing them. Let me go over three of them. Minimum wage, social security and abortion.

The minimum wage is a bad idea. It penalizes people at the bottom of our society. It encourages an underclass. The reason it does that is that the first job a person has is supposed to teach them three things: Arrive on time, have a positive attitude and accept supervision. The higher the minimum wage the older a person at the bottom of the social system is before they get that first job. If we had a zero minimum wage, then teenagers could work for a few dollars per hour and early on learn these lessons. The thinking on the Left is that people stay at minimum wage jobs all their life, so they NEED a higher starting salary. That is a stupid idea. It doesn't work. Unskilled labor is not a uniform class of people. By having a high minimum wage, the most skilled person gets first crack at a minimum wage job. The less skilled person is aced out. As time passes, the less skilled person gets aced out over and over again and cannot increase their skill base. The goal of the minimum wage was said to help the abjectly poor instead it hurts the bottom 80% of the poor and helps the top 20% of the poor.

Social Security funded using taxes is a stupid idea. When Social Security was founded, it allowed an income transfer between those who worked and those who did not. According to the law it is not a pension plan. I know, you have been told over and over that social security is a pension plan. It is not. When Social Security was originated, there were no mutual funds, nor private pension plans. Now there are. Why is the government involved in a program that could be done by the private sector?

Abortion was supposed to free women and make them equal to men. Instead abortion has made women little more than sex objects. Why should a man marry when he can have all the benefits of marriage without any of the responsibilities of marriage? As I said a while back, there is a case before the federal courts that attempts to free a man from his obligation to support a child he has fathered on a woman. The goal is to have a way for a man to repudiate a baby before the baby is born. If the man repudiates the baby, then he is freed of all obligation to provide child support for 18 or so years. The guy in the suit makes the case that he had no control over the woman's decision to have the baby. He had told her that he wanted no babies. She had told him that she was sterile. If the man has no control over the child he fathers, why should he be forced to pay for that child's upkeep. Men and women are different. Saying anything else is silly. They cannot be made to have the exact same goals and aspiration for a good life. Abortion has failed to achieve the goal of freeing women. Yet the Left is so wedded to abortion, there can be no compromises on a right that accomplishes none of the goals it set out to accomplish. Why do we still have it?

Again, the 1960's was turning point in our country's history, because we adopted a set of views that decoupled cause and effect. You listen to my assessments of those three public policies and you are on the Left, you cannot possibly believe what I have said is true, because you know I am either lying OR I am insane OR I am an evil bastard.

I'm reading a book on post-modernist thought. The main idea I have gleaned so far is that Truth cannot be discerned under post-modernist thought. Or rather there is no such thing a shared Truth. Because everyone comes to their readings of a given event with preconceived notions, then there are as many truths as there are people looking at an event. What that means is that we as a people have constructed subsets of Reality. The Left and the Right in this country no longer view the world the same way. The underlying premises of Reality cannot be agreed upon, therefore each side perceives that the other side is morally bereft or insane.

Think about this a minute. If you want to believe that Communism is more moral than Capitalism, you can. If all your friends agree with that premise, then it is true. If you refuse to accept any outside evidence, then it remains true. The problem arises when you personally go to implement a set of policies based on Communist ideology and they don't work in real life. Here's the final step you can take. You can ignore your personal experience and still believe that Communism will get better results than Capitalism. Since we live in a Capitalist society, you would have the luxury of believing that Communism can work better than Capitalism no matter how awful it gets for the average citizen of the polity that implemented socialist/Communist policies.

I draw your attention to New Orleans. The city before Hurricane Katrina was a cess pool. It had been under Democratic Party control for over 60 years and should according to theory have been a very good place to live. Yet, just like France, New Orleans had high unemployment, a shrinking economy and vast underclass. Again, if you are a Progressive, you can easily ignore this observed fact for any reason you choose to have, because it does not affect you directly.

Right now we have in the United States two or more views about how the world should work and there is no way to resolve the dispute, because post-modernist thought says that there is no need to do so. I just find that whole concept to be insane, because there should be some way for both sides in an argument about public policy to come to some agreement as to which side is correct. Here's the kicker, because neither side will accept the data from the other side both sides can believe they are right.

What I was trying to get at by giving those two examples of pacifism was to show that by my standards Desmond Doss' assessment of reality was correct. He perceived the evil in the world and tried to do something about it. By my standards he did.

The Christian Peacemaker Teams have no idea what Reality is. They refuse to accept that the Irreconcilables are evil and must be stopped. Because they have imbibed post-modernist thought, people like the Christian Peacemaker Teams can easily ignore all information that does not agree with their beliefs. They can make the case that their beliefs are equivalent to Desmond Doss' beliefs even though they are not. Why?... Because there are no adverse consequences. Even Tom Fox's death was not enough for the Christian Peacemaker Teams to acknowledge that they might be mistaken. I know, that seems kind of strange for me to say that the death of Tom Fox was not an adverse consequence. Here's what I am trying to get at. When these people in the Christian Peacemaker Teams congregate with their friends and colleagues and loved ones, is anyone going to voice the idea that the Irreconcilables are evil? Nope. Is anyone going to say that the members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams are doing something evil by supporting the Irreconcilables? Nope. Will the funding for the Christian Peacemaker Teams be affected by their views of the "root causes" of the Iraqi War? Nope. Therefore as far as members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams are concerned, there are no real consequences. Only if they got some negative feedback from their friends and associates and acquaintances could they change their way of looking at the world. None of that will happen, so they do not have to change their opinion or the way they look at the world. Among their friends and acquaintances, the three freed hostages will be hailed as heroes. By my standards, the Christian Peacemaker Teams do not deserve to be called heroes. They have accomplished nothing except made themselves feel morally superior to everyone else amid the accolades of their friends and acquaintances.

Ah, well. I know you do not want to face the possibility that people like the Christian Peacemaker Teams are at best what Stalin called "useful idiots", but you might at least give it some thought.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 4

2006-03-31T17:58:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 4

We are having our Spring fund drive. Call in and make a pledge. I shall play some music and take your pledge. I have no engineers or someone to take the phone, so that is what needs to be done. Don't be shy. Call right now at 779-5367 or 779-KEOS or donate securely at www.keos.org.

Over the last few shows I have been mentioning the three web sites dailykos, democratic underground and moveon.org.

Let me read you something from the front page of each of these and tie it in with what I was talking about as far as postmodernist thought.

Wikepeidia says of DailyKos:

Daily Kos is an American political weblog aimed at Democrats and liberals/progressives. Run by Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, a young United States Army veteran, it has an average weekday traffic of 549,000 visits[1], and often reaches over 5 million unique visits in one week. It is arguably the most influential liberal weblog in the United States.

From the front page of the dailykos we have an interesting take on the exchange between Helen Thomas of the White House press corp and the President. First a woman with the nom de cyber of Georgia10 quotes the question and answer between the President and Helen Thomas, then does an analysis of what the President's responses mean to her.

Look here for the article.

Now let's look at this. Helen Thomas asks a question and then won't let George Bush answer without interrupting him. Why is that correct behavior? I want you to think about that. Is it correct behavior to ask someone a question and then try to brow beat them into answering it the way you want it answered? The President tried his best to answer, but could not without getting put off his stride by interruptions. I guess it's just me. I want a civilized debate. Helen Thomas and people like her do not. Admittedly Question Time when the Prime Minister of Great Britain is pummeled with questions in the House of Commons is much worse, but still... I find Ms. Thomas' behavior to be wrong.

There is an art form called Fisking where the blogger goes point by point and refutes a post on the net. It doesn't work in radio, so I'm going to talk about the woman's analysis differently.

First she states as fact that the Iraqis are NOT safer now that Saddam has been deposed. Most of the Iraqis on the ground in Baghdad disagree. Saddam was just as likely to pull someone in, torture and kill them for no known reason. People were frightened all the time. The patina of fear was everywhere. I do not doubt that the killings that are going on in Iraq right now are bad, but... Ah, forget that. The woman is attempting the impossible and has succeeded for people who believe that Iraq is a lost cause. Logic in this case is silly.

Her second point is that America is not safer because we are providing a means of recruiting Al Quaeda agents may be a good one, but I don't believe it. The goal in an armed struggle is to produce people who are veterans. By recruiting and then immediately killing off the recruits, they are not helping their cause. On the other hand, the death of these recruits makes it possible to induce a steady stream of young men and women to die for an evil cause. One of our major rationales for being in Iraq is that the more of them who die there, the less can be sent here to kill people in the United States. The big problem is that a new generation of martyrs is growing up. The leadership of Al Quaeda does not much care how many of their children die as long as they get their way. It's been pointed out over and over again that Al Quaeda resembles a death cult. The question that needs to be asked is: After the fall of Afghanistan, was it a good idea to have Saddam Hussein still in power in Iraq? I won't know the answer to that question until the documents in Arabic from Saddam's rule are translated and made available. Al Quaeda had always assumed that they would move to Iraq should Afghanistan fall. The problem is that even when that vital information is released, too many people on the Left will ignore the information and just assume it is a lie. Since there are no consequences for ignoring the information, they can afford to do that. Can America afford to ignore the information from Saddam's archives?

Her point that we provoked Saddam into a war is probably idiocy. Saddam was NOT going to come clean. Everything we know about the man says that he is the ultimate postmodernist leader. He lived in his own reality and constantly made decisions based on what he wanted to be true, not what was objectively true. Again, under postmodernist thought you do NOT have to change your opinion about something in the light of new facts. Anyone who believes that Saddam was willing to surrender is insane by my standards, yet large numbers of people on the Left believe that Saddam could be made to come clean.

The statement in the analysis that "This President wanted war, and he used a steady stream of lies to start that war to quench his bloodlust." is crazy by my standards. George Bush is a people person. He finds people infinitely interesting. The concept that he lusted after war is totally weird to me. As he said in his answer to Helen Thomas, no President wants to go to war. For some reason, few on the Left want to believe that of him. By my standards, war in Iraq was a strategic necessity to separate Iran and Syria.

The whole thing about George Bush and Tony Blair provoking Saddam as outlined by the Downing Street memos is kind of strange to me. The money quote to me is: "Bush and Blair were hellbent on launching a war which they knew was in violation of international law. They were determined to lie and deceive the world into thinking Saddam Hussein possessed WMD, that he was an imminent threat." If the United Nations passed resolution 1441 and it said in essence that Saddam had to give up his weapons program or suffer invasion, then how can it be against international law? The entire argument about "Bush lied, people died" has been a problem for me from the beginning. As I have said before, in order to be a lie, you have to know what the truth is. Bush didn't know what the truth was. Saddam's generals didn't know what the truth was. The Germans and French didn't know what the truth was. How can it be a lie? And again, once the documents from the Saddam's archive in Arabic are translated we shall know what the objective truth is. Postmodernist thought will make it impossible for anyone on the DailyKos site to believe this.

The entire paragraph about the Senate investigation into the prewar intelligence failure is premised on something I don't know anything about. Georgia10 could be right. The President could be stonewalling. I just do not think Bush has been lying. I just think he has made a series of stupid mistakes. Lying to me means that he has malevolent intent. I do not see that. The Left does. People on the Right have started to call this unreasoned hatred, Bush Derangement Syndrome.

The last paragraph is reflects the ultimate frustration the base in the Democratic Party has with its leadership. The base wants the government to come to a halt until someone, anyone calls Bush to task for... almost everything. There just isn't much in this country that is wrong that isn't caused by George Bush, up to and including the tsunami in Southeast Asia and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the Gulf Coast.

The thing that gets me is that George Bush doesn't need me or anyone to defend his honor. He has been ignoring the screams of the Democratic Party's base from almost the first instant in the White House for a very simple reason. Bush wants to get something done while he is in Washington. The Left wants to... God knows what the Left wants to do. Bush has over the last five years pushed them to come forward with some type of agenda. Nothing has happened. Being against Bush is not a positive agenda. Think about it. The Democratic Party has determined that they can win multiple seats in the fall election by running against Bush. Period. Why does that make sense? The Democrats are saying explicitly "America deserves better than this". Great. What is the agenda? There is none. As I have said before, the Left in this country has failed to achieve the goals they set out to achieve 40 years ago. They only have the belief that their old agenda will work if only we... God knows what. That's the point. Under postmodernist thought no one has to accept that their beliefs are not objectively true. They can ignore inconvenient truths and continue on with policies that either do achieve their stated goals OR are destructive.

I want to close this segment with a thought experiment. If you were not a committed Leftist, would you vote for Democrats based on her assessment of Bush's answers to Helen Thomas' questions? Would you think it was good idea to shut down the Senate in order to force an outcome over a public policy disagreement? Does Georgia10 make a case for voting for the Democratic Party this fall? If you believe any of that, then you have imbibed of postmodernist thought and cannot be reached by any form of reason known to humans. Doesn't that bother you any? There is such a thing as objective reality where there is cause and effect.

I always say that Reality is like a slimy dog that has gone out in the swamp and comes back covered in yuck, expecting you to pet him. If you refuse to pet the slimy dog, then the dog will jump up on you and get all manner of yuck on your clothes. If you still refuse to pet the slimy dog, there is a real possibility that the dog will bite you in the ass. This country is going to have to come to terms with the Reality that the Irreconcilables of radical Islam REALLY mean to take over the world. If we ignore them, then we're going to get bit in the ass.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 5

2006-03-31T17:54:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 5

We are having our Spring fund drive. Call in and make a pledge. I shall play some music and take your pledge. I have no engineers or someone to take the phone, so that is what needs to be done. Don't be shy. Call right now at 779-5367 or 779-KEOS or donate securely at www.keos.org.

Let's look at the Democratic Underground. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the web site:

Democratic Underground, also known as DU, describes itself as an "online community for Democrats and other progressives." Its membership is restricted by policy to those who are "generally supportive of progressive ideals," and who "support Democratic candidates for political office." .[1] However, the scope of discussion is wide and members represent a broad spectrum of liberal beliefs and backgrounds. DU was established on January 20, 2001, the day President George W. Bush was inaugurated.

Let me talk to you about an article on the site by Bernard Weiner of the Crisis Papers (another web site under Democratic Underground). This article is from March 21, 2006 on the main page.

In the article Bernard Weiner is shocked... just shocked that many on the Left have become very anti-Semitic. Where has this guy been? The French have been bashing the Jews for years. For good reason of course, the Jews in Israel have dared to stop being victims. Prior to 1968 when the Jews in Israel were just hanging on against attacks, the Europeans and particularly the French were on their side. Once the Jews devastated the Arabs in 1968 and 1973 wars, the European Left started dumping on them by taking up the cause of the Palestinians and advocating the destruction of Israel. The thinking in Europe has always been that if Israel would just die, then the Arabs would go back to sleep and leave the Europeans alone. The cartoon jihad suddenly woke up many on the Left in Europe that getting rid of Israel would not get rid of their problems.

Anyway. Bernard Weiner makes the case that the Left in America has got to dump the groups that advocate anti-Semitism. A week ago I introduced you to International ANSWER which is one of the major players in the anti-Iraqi War protest movement. People on the Left are just now noticing all the anti-Semitic posters at the International ANSWER's protests. Weiner castigates them for that type of behavior. He warns everyone on the Left that they cannot allow people like this to be the face of the Progressive movement.

What I was trying to get across is that the Democratic Underground bans Conservatives and people who do not agree with the Progressive agenda. They do not just bar disruptive hate-filled right wingers. They ban all non-Progressives. I honestly think they have a right to do that. There is such a thing as freedom of association. The problem arises is that doing that causes an echo chamber effect where you listen only to people who agree with you. Such a move can backfire on you because you get the idea that, since no one of your acquaintance disagrees with you, then a majority of the people in America agree with you.

I draw your attention the elections of 2002 and 2004. In both cases people on the Left were caught flat-footed, when the Republicans won many more seats in Congress than they should have. When Bush won re-election in 2004, a few Progressives in Florida had to seek therapy from mental health professionals to help cope with the devastating let down they were experiencing.

Again, those who imbibe postmodernist thought do not have to believe anything they do not want to believe. No amount of evidence can be marshaled to change their minds. Since no one in their circle of acquaintances disagrees with them, they occasionally get bit by that slimy dog, objective Reality. Not often enough for them to change, but often enough to be surprised that the world does not work the way they expected it to.

9/11 changed the minds of quite a few Liberals and woke them up to the fact that the Irreconcilables of radical Islam were on the march and were a danger. Too many on the Left cried, "We must find the root causes of this conflict. Then and only then will it be possible to resolve this issue." That wasn't good enough for these former Liberals. They saw a Progressive movement that sought to excuse the barbaric behavior of the Irreconcilables and blame 9/11 on the American foreign policy. That did not sit well with quite a few people.

Since then, the sky has not fallen. No re-occurences of a 9/11 style event has occurred. The base of the Democratic Party has become more vocal in their demands that we come home and leave those Muslims alone. If we just do that, then the Muslims will leave us alone. That thinking is not a set of policy statements. We are in a war with the Irreconcilables of radical Islam. How are we going to cause them to leave us alone?

Democratic Underground appears to me to be mostly sane in that the rants against Bush appear to be reserved for the comments section instead of the main page, like DailyKos. Maybe you should check them out.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 6

2006-03-31T17:44:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 6

We are having our Spring fund drive. Call in and make a pledge. I shall play some music and take your pledge. I have no engineers or someone to take the phone, so that is what needs to be done. Don't be shy. Call right now at 779-5367 or 779-KEOS or donate securely at www.keos.org.

The last Liberal web site I want to look in on tonight is moveon.org. Wikipedia says of them:

MoveOn.org is a liberal political group based in the United States that organizes and informs an online community estimated at more than three million people. The group aims to promote grassroots advocacy by its members through various political activities including running a PAC, voter registration drives, and political advertising (especially in swing states).

What I find fascinating about Moveon.org is that they were set up to defend Bill Clinton against a move to impeach him. With the advent of 9/11, they have changed their focus to general grassroots advocacy for Progressive causes. Moveon.org is part of the main stream of the Democratic Party. George Soros is pouring money into their efforts. They represent the face of the present Democratic Party.

What are some of their big campaigns right now?

A popular campaign on the front page of moveon.org right now has the title: "Join Feingold: Censure Bush". Here's the problem with censuring Bush in the Senate. It requires fifty votes. The Democrats have 45. They are going to have to get 6 Republicans to agree with them that "It is clear now that the president has been repeatedly and willingly breaking the law to wiretap American citizens without a warrant. Congress must hold him accountable, and a reasonable first step is censure to show formal Congressional condemnation for his lawbreaking." We are in the middle of a war with the Irreconcilables. A LARGE number of people are frightened. I draw your attention to the Dubai Ports World controversy. Why does it Make sense to censure the President in the middle of a war while he is trying to protect us against an implacable foe? This action will rev up the base, but it will alienate too many moderates, because it shows a lack of sense on the part of the center of the Democratic Party.

There is a scene in Animal House where Otter says, "I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part." If there was ever a futile and stupid gesture, this is it. Why you might ask. The Congress has the power to stop the warrantless wiretaps. The Democrats could simply introduce a bill that precluded the President from doing warrantless wiretaps. By doing it that way, the Democratic Party could put on record those members of Congress in the Senate and the House of Representatives as to how they viewed the warrantless wiretaps. The Democratic Party doesn't want to do that. They do NOT want to go on record as saying that they do not support wiretapping conversation of alleged terrorists. The base of the Democratic Party desperately wants their leaders to do that. Their leaders KNOW that if they do, many of the people voting FOR repealing warrantless wiretaps will lose their seat in Congress this fall. Any sane person would be able to see that in light of the Dubai Ports World debacle.

Moveon.org doesn't see it that way. They are convinced that the censure of the President will cause people to vote for them in November. That's crazy. Again, because the base of the Democratic Party has imbibed of postmodernism, they perceive that they can pull off a censure AND not have any negative consequences befall them. There's no damned way. Ah, it doesn't matter. Russ Feingold wants to beat Hillary out and get the base to vote for him in the 2008 primaries. He's launching this to please the base of the Democratic Party without much expectation that he will actually get anything done. Again, this is "a really futile and stupid gesture". Look! That's what you get when you won't listen to the other side in any debate format.

Let me show you one more of the moveon.org campaigns on the front page of the web site. It says, "Going Bigger: 2006 Plan for Victory". When you click on the link it says on the second page, "The 2006 elections are only a few months away - and if we keep our eyes on the goal, we're in a position to win big. Democratic control of Congress will mean we can finally move forward with big ideas like health care for all Americans or energy independence, and make sure the troops get home safely and soon from Iraq. This week, we're aiming to expand our election plan with a new TV ad program that will get the truth to voters early in the most important elections across the country"

Think about that for a minute. The big issues for moveon.org are "health care for all Americans or energy independence, and make sure the troops get home safely and soon from Iraq."

How do they plan to get health care for all Americans? It's been tried in Europe, Canada and God knows where else in the world. Universal health insurance with the government being the primary health provider leads quickly to a degrading of the health care system. People in this country know that. Universal health care has no traction. If it was going to get people elected, it would have done so in the past. It's not a new idea.

How are they going to achieve energy independence without drilling for oil and expanding the number of refineries in this country? Oh, yes, oh, yes, oh, yes, Conservation... Wind power... Ethanol... What? That's stupid. All of those have been tried in the U.S. and Europe and Canada. They didn't work. These are new ideas? No way. The Democratic Party is associated with the environmentalist obstruction of drilling for new oil. Conservation, wind power and ethanol don't have traction with the American people. Sorry. No sale.

The cry of "Bring the boys home from Iraq... Now..." is a nonstarter. The Republicans tried to get the Democrats to go on record as favoring immediate pullout and the Democrats almost all voted against the bill. The immediate withdrawal from Iraq looks like it will generate votes. It won't. That's crazy. Regardless of what the polls say, a majority of Americans are frightened that if we pull out of Iraq before they have a stable government, the terrorists will use Iraq as a staging area to attack the U.S. Regardless of whether that is true, that is how most Americans see it. Again. No traction.

Where is the policy statements on these wonderful Progressive sites? They do not exist. As I said to one of the activists on Democratic Underground in an email, "the Democrats are in the same position now that the Conservative movement was in the early 1960's. The Democrats are out of power, out of ideas and spoiling for a fight." Great. What did that buy the Republicans in 1964? It bought them a landslide defeat. It took 15 years for the Republicans to recover from that failure. As it stands now, I do not think the Democrats can recover from their failures for at least 15 years. It may be much longer because they refuse to learn from their failures and look for new ideas.

Ah, well. I have said what I wanted to say tonight. I wanted to introduce you to the present center of the Democratic Party, so that you can make your own assessments as to their sanity. You really do need to go out to these three sites and read through their posts. I consider all three of them to be trips into fantasy land, but maybe you would not.

The whole point of this exercise tonight was to get you to realize that the Left AND the Right in this country are not living in the same reality, because the Left has refused to admit that their policies no longer appeal to a majority of Americans. DailyKos, Democratic Underground and moveon.org are not helping. Their position appears to be that if they just found the magic packaging technique their policies will be acceptable to the majority of Americans. They aren't.

Anyway. MacKenzie Pequa the Third takes over now. She will play you some music for the rest of the night.

Take it away, Mac.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 20, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Index

2006-03-31T17:36:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 20, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Index

Segment 1: Part I of a look at the Third Annual Peace March in San Francisco on Saturday, March 18, 2006, focusing on the signs people displayed for the media.

Segment 2: Part II of a look at the Third Annual Peace March in San Francisco on Saturday, March 18, 2006, focusing on the signs people displayed for the media.

NOTE: I do not claim that all of the above is original. Where I have been able to do so, I have given links. If I have plagerized someone else's works without attribution, please give me the link and I shall make an update.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 20, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 1

2006-03-31T17:28:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 20, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 1

As I have said multiple times, I doubt whether there is anyone out there, BUT just on the off chance that there is ONE person listening, I shall endeavor to persevere. I just love that phrase. It's from the movie The Outlaw Josie Wales which I consider to be one of the best Western ever made.

We are at the start of our fund drive. Call in and make a pledge. I shall play some music and take your pledge. I have no engineers or someone to take the phone, so that is what needs to be done. Don't be shy. Call right now at 779-5367 or donate securely at www.keos.org.

Remember that I am but a voice from the velvet black calling to you across the gulf of our mutual incomprehension.

Last weekend was the third anniversary of the start of the Iraqi War. There were multiple protests around the world against the Iraqi War. Very few people are attending these shindigs. Or rather it seems to be the same people over and over again. The Left has been loose coalition for quite a while. It seems like a protest against... Oh, fill in the blank is called and the Free Mumia crowd shows up, "No Globalization" makes an attendance and so on and so on.

Let me tell you about the one that just took place this last Saturday, March 18 in San Francisco. International ANSWER or Act Now to Stop War and End Racism is one of the big anti-war groups. International ANSWER is allege to be a front group for the Workers World Party. The Workers World Party is a hard line Stalinist Communist group that was formed in the wake of the Soviet Union cracking down on Hungary in 1955. WWP split from the Communist Party, USA because they were upset that the Soviets did not use MORE force. Yeah, you heard me right. The WWP are REALLY into hard core authoritarian philosophy. The big problem the anti-war movement is having is that they are being tarred as pro-Communists and pro-terrorists and pro-Palestinian. The protest by International ANSWER this last Saturday did not disabuse anyone.

Let me read you some of the signs that were on display. These came from agent zombie who is a spy for the vast Right Wing Conspiracy. The front group he identifies with is a web site called Little Green Footballs. Wait... You have heard of Little Green Footballs... No? Well, Little Green Footballs has its headquarters in a nitrogen filled room under the Denver International Airport. Yes, they do. The leader is Charles Johnson who brought down Dan Rather by showing that the Texas Air National Guard memos were made in Microsoft Word. Charles Johnson is allege to be a giant lizard from outer space bent on world domination. Little Green Football readers are thus called the Lizardoid minions. The vast Right Wing Conspiracy was quick to recruit him when he set up shop under the Denver International Airport. And, oh, yes, Charles is alleged to get checks from the Israelis for promoting the Zionist plan for world domination.

You're sitting there going, "Whoa, dude. Drinking that water you use to wash out your bong is bad for you." I can't help it if my reality and yours does not intersect all the time. The main Leftist web sites, DailyKos, Democratic Underground and moveon.org are somewhat convinced that all of what I have said about Charles Johnson is true, including the nitrogen filled headquarters under the Denver International Airport. Come out to my blog and I have links to these web sites. You have to go to those web sites to actually get the feel for how far left the Democratic Party has moved. What is really frightening is that these three sites are the most sane of the leftist web sites around.

Anyway. Let me read you some of the signs that were on display at the San Francisco rally against the Iraqi War and Israeli Occupation of the West Bank plus some pro-Cuba and pro-Venezuela signs. These photos came from agent zombie who is a spy for the vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

Look here for the signs I am describing.

The first sign in the sequence shown by agent zombie is one that is all black and says, "THERE IS NO GOD BUT ALLAH, MOHAMMAD IS THE MESSENGER OF ALLAH."

Many of you out on the Left wonder why people who are Conservatives like me wonder about your patriotism. Signs like this a anti-war rally surely do not help. What am I to make of it? Wait... I do not say that people should not show such signs. It is a free country despite what you may think. And despite what you have heard Conservatives are not in favor of quashing freedom of speech.

Anyway. what I an getting at here is that the presence of a sign proclaiming an Islamic message would not lead a rational person to perceive the marchers to be on the side of the United States, but on the side of the Irreconcilables.

Onward. The next sign shows, "Bible: the way of the dinosaur. Imperial God is dead. Life is God. Imperial God is Fascism. god's power is within."

Interesting concept that. People show up at protests with signs that all together make no sense, but taken in parts kind of make sense. The gist of this one means to me that imperialism is a major component of American foreign policy right now. The protester is against that. I often wonder about imperialism, because it depends how you define that word whether the U.S. is an Imperialist nation state. If you mean that the U.S. wants to dominate the world's culture, sell our goods and services everywhere, and generally interfere in other people's countries by simply exporting our products and investing in their economies, then I guess there is a case for that. The problem is that under that scenario the foreigners have to volunteer to adopt our ways, so how can it be real imperialism. I mean, imperialism has always meant to me the conquering and governing of a country. You can make the case that Iraq and Afghanistan have been conquered and now are being governed by American proxies, but am not convinced that that is the case.

The sign seen in this sequence which shows a sign that says, "Screw War." with a turtle having sex with a Army helmet. I don't see anything interesting here. I mean, the guy holding the sign looks like a teenager looking to hook up with some chick. Oh, wait, you did know that protests are great places to pick up women? Oh, yeah, everyone involved makes that point. Protests have ALWAYS been a great place to meet people of the opposite sex. Talk to any aging hippie and they'll tell you stories about the 1960's anti-war protests.

Wow... the next sign has four panels. One panel says, "No Blood 4 Oil." I've always wondered how anyone can truly believe that we went over there to enrich Bush's friends. I mean, let me throw out a scenario for you. If in 2003, Bush wanted to get control of Saddam's oil for his friends, why couldn't he have done this. First send a minion to Saddam and say, "Hey, Saddam, dude, buddy, if you give my friends the exclusive right to buy your oil at a discounted rate, I'll lift the U.N. sanctions." Remember that in 2003, there were a large number of countries who were pressuring Bush to do that. By doing it that way, Bush could have made his friends a huge amount of money without having to get the U.S. involved in Iraq directly. Why go to war for oil, when Saddam would have jumped at that scheme? There's one other problem with the scenario about "blood for oil". If we were there for the oil only, why are we not guarding the pipelines more diligently? Think about it for a minute. If we went to Iraq to only get the oil, then we should be guarding the oil pipelines and ignoring the Iraqi people. The insurgents are blowing up the pipelines in depressing frequency.

The next panel on that sign says, "Drive out Bush Now" where the letter S in Bush is a Nazi swastika. Yes, the impeachment frenzy has reach fever pitch lately. I mean, the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy got Clinton impeached, so the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy should get Bush impeached and run out of office. The problem I have had with this one is the lack of math training on the Left. Think about it... Come on you can do this formula... It's a simple subtraction... Here goes... White House minus Bush equals Cheney. Why is that an improvement?... Earth to Liberals... Earth to Liberals... You hate Cheney too. Why is impeaching and removing Bush such a good idea? The DailyKos web site has been all over this idea for a long while and not once have they done the math on this little project. What also bothers me is that Cheney has always been said to control Bush. Bush after all is a village idiot from Texas. How could anyone want to unmask the puppet master. If Bush is bad, then having a President Cheney would be even worse.

Onward, the next panel of the sign says, "The First Death in War is Peace." I've always had a problem with this formulation of the logical argument that there are no just wars. Saddam was an evil bastard. He had killed as many as 500000 children before the war, so why shouldn't we depose him? Wait... You have been keeping up with the Oil for Food scandal? Saddam diverted money meant to feed children to build palaces and buy weapons. The estimate of the number of children who died as a result of the embargo between 1991 and 2003 has always been around 500000. In addition the best guess is that Saddam was killed about 300000 of his people and dumped them in mass graves.

The last panel is the one that I really have a problem answering because it appears to be right. It says, "Why do we kill people who kill to show killing is wrong?" It's a good question. I haven't got much of an answer for it. The question should be whether the killings in Iraq will forestall killings elsewhere in the future. The jury is still out on that one. If Iraq collapses into a civil war and never develops, then that panel will have some meaning. If Iraq and the Middle East has a burst of freedom, then people in the future will look at it the same way we look at South Korea. Was the Korean War justified? Is the freedom that South Korea now enjoys worth the killing, pain and sorrow that the Koreans suffered in the 1950's? Most people would say yes.

The next sign cuts to the core of the anti-war movement's credibility gap for most Conservatives. It shows Adolf Hitler with a tear in his eye, a balloon over his head saying "My Boys" and puppet handles manipulating Jeb Bush, Arnold Swartzenager, Ronald Reagan and George Bush. There is a note at the bottom saying "Meet the Fockers." Bush and all Conservatives as Nazis has always baffled most Conservatives, because the Conservative movement has always pushed for smaller government and lower taxes. How can a Conservative be a Nazi, if we do not support the idea of a big government? If you look at the rhetoric of the grass roots Conservatives, you find that Bush is in big trouble with Conservatives right now because he has NOT pushed for smaller government. The bloated federal budget is not something that most Conservatives are happy with. The amount of pork and earmarks is a major scandal for most Conservatives. How can you be a Nazi when you are against most of the things Hitler was in favor of? I haven't figured that one out?

The next picture shows signs promoting International Action Center which is another front group for the Workers World Party. Again, Communists have a big presence in this party. What is kind of weird is that one of the signs promotes freeing Mumia Abu-Jamal. Hello!?? What has that to do with an anti-war demonstration? Then again, International Action Center is big on self-promotion.

The sign that shows up next says, "End Colonialism in the 'Americas'". Again, you have to define your terms. If colonialism means that the U.S. has too much presence in North and South America through our various companies and culture, then they have a case. The problem arises when you define colonialism as being in direct control. I wonder at that. Hypersensitivity has become the fashion of the day. ANY presence in the Americas is defined as too much. Kind of wonder about the sign in the context of a anti-Iraqi War rally. Why does it make sense to protest this problem at the same time as the Iraq War? It makes it look to someone who's watching that the protesters are a rent-a-mob instead of protesters for a given cause.

The group "Veterans Against The War" put some coffins draped with American flags out in the street to signify the waste of lives in this war. Whether it makes sense to average Americans is another issue. There is a problem in that quite a few people wandering around the coffins were dressed with keffiyehs, which are the pattern of scarf that Yasser Arafat used to wear..

The next sign is kind of strange to me. It says, "U.S. Out of Iraq! Israel Out of the Occupied Territories! Break with the Democratic Party of War and Racism - For a Workers Party for Socialist Revolution." This comes from the Spartacus League which is yet another front group for the Workers World Party. I find this one kind of fascinating, because there was Spartacus League in post World War I Germany that started a Communist revolt against the Weimar Republic in 1919. It was quashed. The current Spartacus League is another Communist group. Do you realize the irony of the sign? To most Conservatives, the Democratic Party is hard Left, yet there are people in this country who consider the Democratic Party as being to Conservative. That's a really hard concept for me to wrap my mind around. At least the sign makes some sense. Palestine has always supposed to be a root of the whole Middle East mess. I've looked at it and I just do not believe it.

The next two signs in agent zombie's photo essay as presented by Charles Johnson are kind of strange for me. The first says, "We are Indigenous. The ONLY owners of this Continent." put out by Mexica-Movement. The next sign says, "INDIGENOUS PEOPLE AGAINST U.S. TERRORISM". Interesting juxtaposition don't you think? Mexican people of Native American descent against the war in Iraq. It kind of makes some sense until you look at their agenda which is the return of all lands lost by Mexico in the Mexican-American War in the 1846-1848 period. They have a point if ever there was an unjust war, the Mexican-American War was unjust. The problem I am having with the sign is that the moral equivalency between the terrorists who do head hacking and blow up women and children versus how we conduct ourselves in Iraq. If you believe the American press, then there is no difference. I don't believe the coverage of the war in Iraq. And, dude, the Iraqi are REALLY ticked at how our media cover the war.

Here's a formula on a sign that I had not thought COULD exist, much less make sense. It says, "Mossad+CIA+Mercenaries are 911 Al-Quaida". I believe what the sign is implying is that the Jews blew up the World Trade Center so that the Muslims would get the blame. In essence the Jews did it. I've always found that interesting. Whenever a terrorist apologist holds forth. The Jews show up as the cause of the problem rather quickly.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 20, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 2

2006-03-31T17:20:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 20, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 2

Back to the signs at the San Francisco protest this last weekend.

Agent zombie capture one sign that I really does rise to the level of insanity. It says, "Impeach Bush for Genocide at Home and Abroad." Here's the problem with saying something like that. What is the definition of genocide? Does the woman carrying the sign mean that Bush has tried to kill off all the Iraqis and all the citizens of New Orleans? If so, he appears to have been a wretchedly incompetent genocidal maniac in both cases. Too weird.

I told you this one was coming. The sign says, "U.S. Hands off Venezuela Support the Bolivian Revolution." This sign is from that Communist group, International Action Center. Very well done when you get right down to it. It even has the web site address. www.iacenterla.org-- Having so many Communists involved directly in the anti-war movement has really started to alarm the saner members of the coalition against the Iraqi War. Who in his right mind would want to be associated in people's minds as wanting to have a totalitarian state like the Soviet Union? What I find fascinating, when the groups against the war in Iraq disassociated themselves from International ANSWER and its front groups, they couldn't get too many people to show up on time and in place to have a proper rally. The one in Washington D.C. had about 200 people show up for the protest. Oooo, that's a growing movement all right. Oh, wait, one more thing about this sign. Venezuela and Bolivia have elected people who are socialists verging on Communists. They REALLY love old Fidel Castro. The problem they are having is that to keep their economies afloat they have had to adopt many free market reforms while at the same time undertaking a very large government intervention to alleviate poverty.

I kind find one of the t-shirts I see in one of picture to be very ironic. It says, "Killing One person is Murder. Killing 100000 is foreign policy." The quote is very similar to what Stalin said when he was derided about how many millions he had killed.

I saw this great sign. It shows a guy in an Arab keffiyeh next to a sign that says, "Stop the War in Iran before it starts." The war in Iran may not come about, but I wonder what the scenario would be if Iran really did get a nuclear bomb and used it on the U.S. I mean, would the same people who cried for Bush's impeachment for launching us on an illegal war then try to get him impeached for not stopping Iran from getting the Bomb? Interesting question that.

Look here for the verbage from Agent Zombie.

One of the pictures shows this guy in a t-shirt that says, "We are all Palestinians Now." His sign says, "Bush equals Hitler." Whenever Conservatives see that sign or something similar, they wonder where the guy holding the sign has misplaced his sanity. It may be clear to you as to connection Bush has to Nazism, but it surely is not clear to people on the Right. And again, Nazism is on the Left, not on the modern Right. The modern Right wants less government and less central control. The modern Left wants more government and more central control.

There's these two signs on the same poles. One says, "FREE IRAQ&PALISTINE! Stop U.S.& Israeli Killers & Torturers! End their imperialist Occupations Now!" The second says, "9-11 WAS A FRAUD! An Excuse for Imperialist Wars to Control World Oil Supplies and Impose U.S. & Israeli Empire." These two themes are throughout the rest of the signs. Too many people in the anti-war movement believe that 9/11 was a plot by Bush and the neocons to create the excuse to go to war with the entire world and impose some form of an imperial America. For some reason, Osama Bin Laden's boast that he and Al Quaeda blew up the World Trade Center has gone right by them or they choose to ignore that little detail. These two signs cause rational people to doubt the bear's sanity. Or at least it causes Conservatives to doubt the bearer's sanity.

A sign that says, "Support our brave AWOL's, CO's and Deserters" can really fire up the average American. I mean, I have no problem with Conscientious Objectors. They seem kind of strange to me. If someone signs up for the military in a time of war, why would they expect to be exempted from combat? I know, there are reasons why a pacifist might want to be part of the military and do support tasks, but it seems kind of silly to me. Absent Without Leave and Deserters have never had big fans in the United States, particularly since we went to all volunteer. Again, why sign up for the military if you don't want to go to war? Ah, well, the sign may be push for support among other protesters.

The sign that says, "If we must kill, let it be Capitalism" is sure going to cause average people to become anti-war. Again, the Communism that showed up in this parade and protest is not a great way to promote the anti-war message.

Now, get ready for this one. On a backpack, it says, "Jail Bush for the murder of JFK." I sat there laughing when I saw that. On the Right we call this a symptom of Bush Derangement Syndrome. I mean, come on, The Left is saying that Bush is a total moron, yet at the same time he can do all these superhuman things. He can cause a tsunami in Southeast Asia. He can plot to change the course of a hurricane so that it hurts Black people. he can get... God knows what can happen. Every time I turn around Bush is being blamed for something else that is either a physical event or impossible, I mean, the Sign makes the case that George Bush went back in time and killed John F. Kennedy. How the hell did he do that? Come on, tell me, I REALLY want to know. Get this people. This is the center of the Democratic Party right now. And all the Liberals are wondering why they can't get elected as a proud Liberal. With friends like these, dude, you just don't need no enemies.

Then there was a sign that said, "I support the Iraqi Resistance." Iraqi Resistance? As in the head hackers and bombers of women and children? As in the people who blew up a Shi'ite shrine in hopes that they could cause a civil war? People, get a grip. Anyone who says that has a problem with their patriotism, if not their sanity. Why does the Left ignore the torture that the so-called Iraqi Resistance does and come down hard on perceived torture that America does? Wait... Oh, yeah, torture where you tear someone's flesh splash their blood on the wall is equivalent to embarrassing them telling them dirty stories. Again, get a grip, the Irreconcilables are laughing at all the useful idiots in the parade from this last Saturday. If you do not believe that, then you may be hopeless.

Oh, I forgot about the anarchists. Yes, indeed. The anti-war movement's parades and protests have attracted the Black bloc. These are hard core anarchists who really want to dispense with government. They have a reputation of starting fights and throwing Molotov cocktails at buildings. They haven't killed anyone yet, but many watchers are waiting for that to happen at some point.

Oh, and boy were there a LOT of Palestinian flags out there. I want you to do a thought experiment. Suppose that the Palestinians stopped blowing up Jews in Israel and started making their country work on the West Bank and Gaza. Do you honestly believe that the Jews would continue to do raids into the occupied lands? Hamas has said specifically that they want to drive the Jews into the sea and kill as many Jews as they can.

Let's see. Who else was involved in the San Francisco protest? Oh, did I mention Code Pink? No, I didn't these are another anti-war group, though not a Communist group per se. They bill themselves as CODEPINK: Women for Peace and as anti-war feminists. Their protest at Walter Reed Medical center where many disabled American soldiers are treated have caused some major league bad press, because the soldiers there feel that they are being disrespectful and insensitive to their pain and suffering.

Hmm... Who else showed up? One picture shows "The World Can't Wait" group. Another anti-war group. Oh, and we wouldn't want to leave out the International Solidarity Movement. This is Rachel Corrie's group. They support the Palestine' right to blow up Jews. I'm not sure they state it that way, but it sure looks that way.

All things must come to an end. I am in the process of getting this show revamped. I just had to share with you some of the sights at the third annual anti-Iraqi War protest in San Francisco, because it makes the point I have been making for the last few months. The Left and the Right are talking past each other. How in the world are we as Conservatives and Liberals going to get along, if the two sides believe that the other side is crazed or demonic or both? I surely do not know.

This last weekend was too hectic for me. Pancake Day shot up Friday and Saturday. I was on the resolutions committee for the Republican Party of Brazos County. Me and this other guy modified slightly the Education portion of the county platform. Then I had to do this that and the other on a few other projects.

Anyway. I will now turn everything over to McKenzie Pequa the Third. She will play you some music. Maybe her music will soothe you to sleep. Maybe not.

Take it away Mac.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Index

2006-03-31T17:16:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Index

Segment 1: Play Dream On by Aerosmith. Made the point that we as a nation are in a similar mood as we were in between February and March of 1942. The war on Terror is not quite going on at a level where we have to acknowledge that we ARE at war.

Segment 2: Play Man Eater by Hall&Oates. Review the book, Smart Sex, by Jennifer Roback Morse in the context of how abortion has made omen less free as opposed to more free. Also discuss a case before the federal courts that will allow a man to repudiate his unborn son in order to avoid child support.

Segment 3: Play When the Trash Meets the Cash by Ronny Cox to make the point that family values means more than a two parent family.

Segment 4: Play Livin' on a Prayer by Bon Jovi to make the point that life is not fair.

Segment 5: Play Money for Nothing by Dire Straits to dscuss the concept of becoming a master craftsman.

Segment 6: Play Africa by Toto to make the point that Bono of the group U2 is incprrect when he says that debt relief will make Africa better off.

NOTE: I do not claim that all of the above is original. Where I have been able to do so, I have given links. If I have plagerized someone else's works without attribution, please give me the link and I shall make an update.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 1

2006-03-31T17:08:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 1

Well, here we are again. The whole point of this show is to involve people in social activism. I've failed in that goal. Basically I wanted to encourage people to be involved in some projects I have come up with. The problem is that idea failed... for whatever reason. It looked good on paper... Ah, well, too bad.

What needs to happen now is to get word of mouth about the show, so I can get something done. What I anticipate doing will be different than the talk shows in the past. Let's see. I could invite a guest up to the studio and in front of a live audience interview the guest and show them my side of the topic. Most talk shows do is use the audience as foils to make the host look good. I want to use the recording session of the audience participation as context. I want to give the background of the topic by interviewing the guest and elicit comments from the audience on what is accepted as the truth about a given topic. Think about it a moment. What if the two sides of the debate cannot even define a common understanding as to what is true about a topic? Without context how can you reach a consensus as to what the truth is?

At the end of the audience segment, the guest gives their initial side of the debate. I want to think about it and then record my rebuttal. Then I record my rebuttal and get that to the guest on a CD I can burn. They in turn record their rebuttal to my rebuttal. How to do that last, I am not sure. The digital recorder I have will probably do it, but I am not sure. I have the software on my computer to patch all the segments together. I can put the audience participation and all three segments of the debate together for broadcast. Once that is all done, then I will create a transcript of the three segments, put them out on my blog and get comments. If I could figure out how to get the MP3 files stored somewhere, so people could download the debates and my program, I would do that.

Let me give you an example. What if the topic is abortion? What is the truth about abortion? Is it a right that is superior to all other rights because it is so important to individual freedom? What are the arguments against that view?

If you listen to talk radio, then you know that they are there to entertain, not inform. I mean, the talk show host tries to get as much time talking as possible. The host mostly wants to count coup on his guests as do the guests want to count coup on the host.

The whole point of the audience participation is to provide context. No topic exists in a vacuum. The biggest problem as I see it is that no one is providing the background for the topics on talk shows. There is wretched little light shed on the topics of the day. Mostly there is heat and bad feelings generated.

Oh, well, that is my goal. Right now, I have to get through this particular program.

A while back, I played some songs then talked about what they meant to me in the context of a given topic.

What I'm going to do is play some classic rock songs and then discuss something dealing with them. We're going to start tonight with a rather strident song.

That was Dream On by Aerosmith

When I was growing up in the 1950's and 1960's, the accepted wisdom was that the US and the Soviet Union would inevitably have a nuclear war and civilization would have to begin again. I read a science fiction book by Andre Norton called Star Man's Son which was a post-Apocalypse story where the United States was destroyed in a nuclear war and after about two hundred years had not recovered. I read a large number of those books. All of them seemed kind of freeing. I mean, the premise was that we could start over and get it right the second time. In short, all of these stories were about rebuilding. There was hope.

Today, we are in a war with the Irreconcilables of radical Islam that will span 30-50 years. The problem most Americans have is that they do not realize that the Irreconcilables may win their jihad. If they do, the new Caliphate will come about and our country will be submerged into their dreams of global Islamic domination. The world they promise is not an appealing one to me. The dreams of the Irreconcilables center around forcing all the people of the earth to acknowledge that Islam is the One True Path and that Muslims are superior to all other people on earth. Their dreams are strident and twisted. The problem then becomes that a good number of the Muslims outside the United States, believe that the goals of radical Islam are at least something to consider.

The response of the United States public has been kind of lukewarm to the war on Terror. The anti-war people have been incensed that they can't get too many of the American public worked up over the war. Because our day-to-day lives have not been really impacted, we are in the situation of Americans in January and February of 1941. World War II was unreal. The real fighting had not occurred as yet.

Today, we are in the same situation. It has been almost five years since 9/11. No other major terrorist attack has taken place in America. There have been terrorist attacks in Madrid and London, but not here. Our economy has recovered and is moving ahead. Even the expense of rebuilding Iraq is not a great burden on us.

Too many people on the Left have been making all kinds of weird points that boil down to militant passificism. What is really strange is that too many on the Right have become impatient and want this bother to be over. The Cartoon Jihad has caused some people to make the final jump to realizing that Islam is not going to go away. The Irreconcilables will not be placated.

Recall the words from Thomas Paine:

"These are the times that try men's souls:

The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, Shrink from the service of his country, but he that stands it NOW,

Deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; Yet we have this consolation with us. That the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly:--

'Tis dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to set a proper price upon its goods; And it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article

As FREEDOM should not be highly rated."

We live in interesting times. Pray that we survive them as we survived the Cold War.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 2

2006-03-31T16:56:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 2

Man Eater by Hall & Oates

I'm reading a book called Smart Sex by Jennifer Roback Morse. What it is about is kind of strange, because it is not a self-help book. I mean, too many books nowadays are about how to increase the pleasure of your sex life. Sex has become a product that must be sold as the ultimate good. Let me quote you a paragraph that struck me as particularly interesting. She says:

Implicit in the modern view is that sexual activity without unwanted pregnancy is an entitlement. Put another way, sexual activity is not only a good, but a great and important good that curtailing it in significant ways constitutes an unacceptable infringement on personal freedom. There are two value judgements implicit in this view. First, separating sexual activity from reproduction is an entitlement. Second, voluntary sexual activity without procreation is always and everywhere a great good. Notice that neither of these statements is "value-neutral." Both contain powerful moral judgements, as well as tacit empirical claims.

The whole point of modern feminism has been that women HAVE to be made equal to men for things to be... I want to say fail, but that word has always seemed incompatible with being an adult. Life is not fair, where fair is defined as the outcome of an event is acceptable to 90% of those affected by the event. Such a standard is impossible. By making sex have no consequences, the unforseen outcome is that women are no longer valued as companions and advisors and soulmates. Women have been life support systems for their sexual organs. They are now objects. Women are encouraged to think that having children will make them less independent and less financially secure. What is even weirder is that children become the property of the woman and not the man. A woman can abort a child over the objections of her husband or the unwed father of the child.

About two weeks ago, a suit was launched in federal court that will have far reaching consequences. The suit is about a man who did NOT wed a woman. She became pregnant. He had explicitly told her that he did not want kids. The woman he was living with agreed to that. She became pregnant. He moved out and repudiated the child. He did not dispute that he was the biological father of the child that was born to the woman. He just said that because he had an implied contract with the woman, she cannot come to him for child support. Think about this for a moment. The guy is saying that the woman could have aborted the child or for that matter, she should have been more careful in her birth control regime. He was in it for the sex and had made no bones about it, so he contends that she, the mother of the child, has no call on his income, because he does not want or need to be a part of the child's life. Throughout the last thirty years courts have held that the woman has total control of her body. Now the chickens have come home to roost. If that is true, then it logically follows that it is the woman's responsibility to take care of a child, if the father repudiates the child before his or her birth.

What could happen is that if this guy wins is that all a live in boyfriend has to do is avoid putting their name on the birth certificate and they are home free. The father of illegitimate children then can be freed of child support by simply publishing a public notice that says that they repudiate the child by their lover or spouse. Right now a husband can do that with a wife's debts. By extension he can make the case that since he has no control over whether a baby is born, he should not have to pay for a baby he does not want. Back up once more. A woman can overrule the biological father of a child she is bearing. She can have an abortion and the man just has to suck it up. It follows that if the man cannot have any control of when a child is aborted, then he at this point in time has no control of whether it is born. The man in this suit is saying that he should not have the burden of paying child support for eighteen to 21 years for a child he does not want. The case will be based on equal protection precedents.

Now, I wonder what that means for married couples. Right now there is an implicit expectation inside a marriage that a man who marries a woman can expect total monogamy AND in return the woman will bear his children and only his children. What if the husband decides that he does not want ANY children? If there is a pre-nuptial agreement spelling this out, then maybe the man can make the case that he does not support any children who result from his wife. On the other hand, look at what could happen if the wife decides to have a baby and the husband says forget it. Right now, the guy is stuck. Marriage by definition means that the husband will support any children his wife produces (assuming she can prove paternity by DNA testing). If this suit is approved, then the husband can repudiate the child before the child is born, divorce his wife and NOT have to pay child support.

A case I heard about was where the husband divorced his wife and she had herself impregnated with fertilized ovum they had created in a bid for children. The guy in that case had to suck it up and pay child support. If this new case goes through, the husband could now reopen his case.

The nastiest outcome of this one is where the husband repudiates the child and stays married to the woman. How in the world would that be resolved? I mean, the husband has in fact said that he does NOT have to give ANY financial support to his child because he has repudiated it. I know, you out there in the audience are looking at me like I am crazy, but like I said at the beginning, what if the guy in the marriage is only looking for sex and not paternity? Think about it. I do not know how it could be done, but I can see such a case coming down the pike.

As I said, interesting times.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 3

2006-03-31T16:49:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 3

<When the Trash Meets the Cash by Ronny Cox> Pull it off the shelf

As I have told you, I do cleanup detail here at KEOS. Before the radio station can air a CD, we have to make sure it is FCC compliant. I review all the CD's that sit on the shelf for over a year. Or rather I review the ones that make sense to me. Rap, punk and dark metal are just too hard for me to comprehend.

About a year ago, I reviewed this album by Ronny Cox. It had sat on the shelf for God knows how long. I remembered this album even though it has been a year, because so few of the albums I review are any good.

This song has to do with the basic argument against Capitalism. I know, it doesn't look that way, but you have to look at it from the point of these women selling themselves to the highest bidder, because they have convinced themselves that they have no other choices. Note that we are not talking prostitution exactly. The implication is that the women in the song are becoming mistresses or maybe wives of the moneyed interests in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

The thinking on the Left goes that in a compassionate and just society, women should not have to sell themselves in such a meat market. The thinking on the Right is that women should not do this, period. The problem here is that transactions like the ones in the song have been happening forever. A woman decides she wants the good life without working for it and she finds a man with money who is willing to support her. I have heard stories that there are professional mistresses. Again, I'm not talking prostitutes per se, but women who become the mistresses of one individual wealthy man. When the guy tires of her, she moves on to another wealthy man. Remember WKRP in Cincinnati. The character, Jennifer, was like that.

What is even weirder are the people on the extreme Left who applaud this type of behavior and label women like this as sex workers. Or there are Libertarians (the extreme Right) who say that since there is no coercion there can be no real crime.

Yet... the whole idea undermines society. It promotes the idea that women are not good for anything except sex. Something to think about.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 4

2006-03-31T16:45:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 4

<Livin' on a Prayer by Bon Jovi> #2.4

This is another protest against Capitalism. The poor benighted people in the story have such cruel and awful lives and it is all so awful. If we just had a compassionate government like the countries in Europe have, we wouldn't hear about people in bad situations like the one in the song.

The problem I always have with people who bemoan their lot in songs like this are that they never try to look for any solutions. They accept that life has screwed them and make no effort to do anything about it. I hear over and over again about people who are working two or three jobs just to make ends meet and can't understand that.

We have a movement locally called the Living Wage Coalition. Their goal is to in essence raise the minimum wage locally so that people can have enough to get by. They never ask why people are making less than a living wage. The answer almost always that the person involved is unskilled labor. Then they do not ask how come the individual is unskilled labor. I mean, how can someone be so unskilled in this country that they do not demand a living wage? The answer normally is that the person never finished high school OR never tried to get a skill that would demand a living wage. At that point the reasons become too individualistic to guess as to an overall answer.

The correct way in this country to raise people into a living wage is to get them to volunteer to gain the skills they lack. The idea that their poverty will be alleviated by simply giving them more money is just silly, plus here is the kicker. When you raise the minimum wage, you ace out the least skilled. Let me try this again. If a person has a skill level that does not demand even a minimum wage and a county raises all wages to a living wage, then the least skilled cannot get a job at the new pay scale. The most skilled of the unskilled pool of laborers take all the jobs. Thus the people you really want to help can never get a job, because the more skilled people will take all the jobs leaving them nothing.

A while back I told you about the Hiring Hall Association, that is my answer to the Living Wage Coalition. Ask people to volunteer to raise their skill.

There was a movie I saw once. The title was "Lower the Drawbridge, Don't Drain the Mote." I think about that phrase whenever I hear people demanding the raising of the minimum wage.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 5

2006-03-31T16:41:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 5

<Money for Nothing by Dire Straits> #4.5

This is a long song. When this came out a long time ago, I saw the music video for it and it always struck me how much misinformation is in it. The guy who wrote the song said that he was in an store buying something and overheard a blue collar worker complaining about how easy it looks for performers to make their money. The lyrics writer said that he had to quickly write down all the conversation before it slipped out of his head.

You see, what you see on TV and at live performances is the work of years. On average, a performer can work twenty years before making it big. Acts like Simon and Garfunkel hit it big when they were in their teens, but that is a rarity. Oh, wait, you never heard of Simon and Garfunkel. Ah, it doesn't matter. They hit the top in about 1970 and died as an act in about 1976. Paul Simon made it as a single, but Art Garfunkel never made it big. One of their songs in the 1970's was about being 64 and being friends. They turned 64 this last year and toured the country trying to milk the nostalgia wave. The break up had been so awful a lot of people wonder how Art could stand doing the tour.

Anyway. What I am getting at is that to be the best you have to spend a LOT of time perfecting your craft. It is not as easy as it looks on the TV. f the blue collar worker had thought about it, he would have been aware that even moving refrigerators and color TV's effectively requires experience. A master craftsman in any trade no matter how humble commands a premium price. Or he or she should.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 6

2006-03-31T16:34:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 6

<Africa by Toto> #4.10

Did you hear that Bono of U2 was named one of the Persons of the Year last year for Time Magazine? Yeah, Bono, Bill and Malinda Gates were Persons of the Year for 2005. You know what Bono did that made him so fantastic? He advocated that Western countries forgive the debts of African nations. Debt relief always fascinates me when it comes up. African nations are run by kleptocracies. When you advocate debt relief, it normally means that you want to allow the thieves in a given African government a chance to get away with stealing the cash.

The correct solution for a poor country to become developed is to first get a noncorrupt government. It's impossible to develop in a Third World situation without the rule of law and a government that does not rob its people.

Ah, well, I didn't do a very good job tonight, because this format has basically and unequivocally failed. I described at the top of the program how it has to evolve. We shall see whether I can get the Management Team to approve the changes. If not, then you won't be hearing me anymore.

Talking to myself is kind of fun for a while but not this late at night. I really am having a hard time believing that you exist.

Well. that's it. MacKenzie Pequa the third will now take over and play an assorted and eclectic mix of music for the rest of the night.

Take it away, Mac.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 6, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Index

2006-03-31T16:26:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 6, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Index

Segment 1: Discuss a photo essay by guy named Michael Totten who went to northern Iraq to see what is there.

Segment 2: Describe how I would do "Grass for Two; Tea for One"

NOTE: I do not claim that all of the above is original. Where I have been able to do so, I have given links. If I have plagerized someone else's works without attribution, please give me the link and I shall make an update.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 6, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 1

2006-03-31T16:20:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 6, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 1

There's this guy named Michael Totten and he decided that he wanted to live his life a certain way. He did not want to work for a newspaper. He wanted to travel and see things and have people pay him to do that.

At the present time, Michael is living in Lebanon. He recently made a trip to Kurdistan in northern Iraq.

Oh, you probably never heard of the Kurds. For the last fifty years they have been trying to set up a country where they could live their lives. When Gulf War I ended, the U.S. established a no-fly zone over northern Iraq. Under that umbrella, the Kurds establish a democracy. It was not a very good one, but it was a light year better than Saddam's rule. Since 2003 and the fall of Saddam, the Kurds have proceeded at warp speed to establish a safe place for themselves. The Kurd who had fled their country have been streaming back... bringing the cash they made on their sojourn. The economy in northern Iraq is booming. Michael Totten makes the case that Kurdistan now is starting to look like Utah. They even have something close to our fast food places like McDonalds, but not quite. They have stolen the Golden arches symbol, but not the way of making the burgers.

Michael's last report on his blog was about a nasty little killing factory Saddam had there. The Peshmerga, the militia in Kurdistan, fought and took the place from Saddam loyalists. The Kurds have turned it into a museum.

Whether you believe that "Bush lied and people died" or "No WMD, thus it was all a stupid waste of time" or any of the other talking points from the Left, is beside the point to me. I am proud of warriors for stopping what is pictured in this photo essay. I am proud of our warriors for building schools and roads. I am proud of our warriors for crying when an Iraqi child is murdered by an IED meant for them. I am proud that we have stopped the killing factories in Iraq.

Throughout the Cold War, I was ashamed that we supported evil bastards like Saddam. I was ashamed that we left the Kurds high and dry multiple times over the years. When the Wall fell, I prayed that we could start living our morals instead of mouthing them. When I realized what Saddam was doing to his people, I wanted him gone. I do not care what the reason Bush gave for going there. I am proud that the museum that Michael showed us is just that, a museum. This killing factory and hundreds like it were in full swing throughout Saddam's rule. They are now museums or scrubbed from the face of the Earth. Saying that containing evil like this is a good idea is insane to me.

I am now absolutely convinced that the Iraqi War was a good idea.

I am convinced of that because of... Georgia.

Yeah, Georgia. During the Civil War, Sherman's March to the Sea put paid to the Confederacy. The South had to surrender when Confederacy was split. Liberating Iraq was a strategic necessity to separate Iran and Syria. We can talk all night about what might have been. The facts remain that Iran, Iraq and Syria WANTED weapons of mass destruction. They cannot easily get them now with us on their doorstep.

We are stuck with what IS. Lebanon is relatively free. Syria is in so much turmoil that they cannot use whatever Saddam gave them in the waning days of his rule. Iran looks like it can do some major damage, but I doubt it. The Middle East has been a cesspool for 60 years. Are things better now than before the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq? If you say they are worse, I doubt your sanity.

Leftists in this country seem to be saying, "I am kinda proud that we might have closed down a small number of killing factories like the one in this photo essay, BUT blah, blah, blah." Why does the pride in what we have accomplished have to be so lukewarm, so tentative? Why must Leftists when confronted with the evil shown in pictures of the killing fields of Iraq struggle to find some reason not to say, "America did a good thing. I proud of my country for doing this."? When I hear quibbling like that, I want to scream, "Have you lost your mind? How can anyone look at pictures of Saddam's infamy and try to find a reason for not stopping a killing factory?"

The biggest threat to our country right now is nation states willing to create WMD to give to terrorists. Al Quaeda and all its evil siblings can do some damage, but it takes a willing nation state to create biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. By destroying Afghanistan and Iraq, we have served notice to every nation state on Earth that they could be on our list of targets, if they produce a WMD that takes out a huge number of our citizens. The Left, like the disarmament movement of the 1930's, is filled with True Believers. They honestly believe that men like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden can be appeased. Appeasement is not an option.

We are in a war that will span 30-50 years. The pictures that Michael Totten brought back from northern Iraq define what we are fighting. How can anyone attempt to say that we should not have stopped the actions that they describe from happening to anyone?

It's all about symbols, when you get right down to it. The members of Islam have a way of looking at the world that is all encompassing. I was reading this other blog and one of the people posting made the point that we call Islam a religion, but it is not just a religion. Islam is an entire way of living and viewing the world.

Various people seek to excuse the behavior of the Irreconcilables by showing how we have done similar things in the past. We can do a tit for tat all night but it does not change anything about the Irreconcilables of radical Islam. Osama bin Laden has explicitly said that he wants to recreate the Caliphate as the first step of taking over the world. He has said explicitly that he wants to kill, forcibly convert to Islam, enslave or make second class citizens all who oppose him. The Muslims out there have been mostly silent in condemning his goals.

When I see images of protestors in foreign lands with signs that say, "Behead those who insult Islam", I must assume that most Muslims agree with the goals of Osama bin Laden and the other Irreconcilables. What are we to make of this type of behavior? Are we to sit idly by and allow ourselves to lose our freedom or worse become slaves? How can anyone say that our fears are unjustified when we are confronted day after day by ugly images like that? Fear begets hatred. That is just the way it goes. A real Christian hates the behavior not the person who does it. Admittedly there are not too many real Christians anymore, but that is the theory.

By throwing the race card, which is what a large number of people are doing, they are saying that we hate members of Islam because of their race. I don't think that is exactly true. Everything I have seen leads me to believe that most people in the U.S. are frightened that they will be going about their daily lives and suddenly some splodey dope will detonate a bomb in their midst. In America people like to think they have control of their lives. With that loss of control comes fear and hatred addressed to the people who advocate such behavior.

If your position is that America has it coming because of... fill in the blank. Again, we can do tit for tat all night long. The major question should be: Is it correct behavior to kill women and children in the name of Islam in order to exact revenge on the West for doing these real or imagined wrongs against Muslims?

The case made by various apologists for the Irreconcilables that the U.S. has killed women and children of Islam. I have to point out that I do not believe that America intends to kill noncombatants on purpose. If anyone then says that there is no difference between unintended casualties and intended casualties, I have to disagree.

There is another set of people who say that this is a racist war. Racism is the irrational fear of the Other. What you are seeing is rational fear based on the information before us. The riots, the burning of the Danish embassies seem to bear out the worry that Islam is violent, barbaric and basically evil. Osama bin Laden is the face of Islam we see. The marchers with their hate filled signs are all we see. The daily drum beat of beheadings and destruction of holy sites in Iraq do not allow us to feel that Islam is really a Religion of Peace. The screams of Iranian President Amadingdong that he will incinerate Israel and the West with nuclear fire do not make us feel that Islam's leaders are sane.

The big cry of the protesters is that we are not showing enough respect to Islam. I've got to ask, "Why should we?" What have they done to cause us to respect them. We are frightened that the Irreconcilables will destroy our way of life and force us to convert to Islam. Those may not be the goals of most Muslims, but they sure are the goals of the Irreconcilables.

I recognize that it looks like the West is doing the same thing as the Irreconcilables. It looks like we plot, salivate, lust to attack Islam and convert Muslims to our way of life. The truth is Muslims are frightening us. Our solution to the problem is that in Middle East we are promoting democracy, because that is what worked with the Germans and the Japanese.

I would also point out that most of the Muslim apologists for the Irreconcilables' bad behavior do not help their case much, because they come across as paranoid, bitter and whiny individuals looking for pity. The West is frightened. When the Arab street screams for blood, nothing happens. Governments in the Middle East do not go to war against the West. When the American street cries for blood, a huge amount of blood flows onto the Arab street. To most American, the Irreconcilables' hatred of our cultural intrusion into their lives is the cry of an addict saying that he cannot stop himself so he HAS to kill his pusher.

We, the moderate Muslims and Americans, have to come up with a way to stop the Irreconcilables. We have to come up with a way where we can live together without attacking each other short of us kowtowing to Irreconcilables' every demand.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 6, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 2

2006-03-31T15:48:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, March 6, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 2

When I started this program, I had high hopes that people would actually help me out and get involved in the projects I proposed. That has not happened. I am going to try something else.

I do not want to but I will have to issue a challenge for "Grass for Two; Tea for One". I came up with this idea a while back. you see I was reading this book by Bernard Cornwell dealing with the Peninsular Campaign in the Napoleonic War. The main character challenged a British Navy officer to a duel. It was described as Grass for Two; Tea for One. I always loved that phrase because it meant that the two participants would meet at dawn, shots would be fired and one guy would eat the grass and die while the winner would sit down to tea for breakfast.

On the other hand a proper gentleman in the 21st Century does not use violence, he debates. I want to debate a large number of people. I had planned to use the Internet as a means of getting people to help me find groups to debate. Well, that sure as hell didn't work, because no one is listening to this program. The joke in that phrase is that I always have tea after a debate and few others do, so in reality the two participants in my debates will come together, debate and then I have my tea and that is it.

Debate is not what you think it is. Please review the Lincoln-Douglas debate format or rather get my reference to a book that outlines the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858. The idea is that the first person makes their case, then the second person makes their case, then the first person gets to rebut. A transcript of the remarks of all three segments will be posted on my blog and both sides will take questions.

The original Lincoln-Douglas Debates took place in seven separate Congressional Districts in Illinois in 1858. Their topic was slavery. Douglas, the Democrat, made the case that slavery should be extended into the Western territories. Lincoln, the Republican, made the case that slavery should not be allowed in any of the new territories. Underlying the debate was a Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott Case. Justice Taney writing for the majority ruled that Blacks could never vote in federal elections, because Blacks were inferior to Whites. Justice Taney's thinking was extremely weird, because Blacks had voted in every federal election up until his decision. Plus Blacks had fought in the American military in every war up until that time, including the Revolution. The Founding Fathers had assumed that slavery would wither away, because they outlawed it in the Ohio Territories. Lincoln wanted to extend that ban to all unincorporated territories in the U.S. at the time and any new territories we might acquire in the future. The Republican Party was worried that sooner or later someone would buy slaves in the South and move them North as a test case. If that had happened and the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the slave owner, then slavery could not be prohibited in ANY state. The debates went forward, but nothing was resolved and Lincoln lost the election for the Illinois Senate.

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates were a massive spectacle. They were a form of entertainment, because each speaker had to be able to think on their feet. What I have decided is that "Grass For Two; Tea For One" should illuminate the topic at hand instead of providing entertainment.

Anyway, the concept that allowing both sides to think about the argument and marshal resources off line is better than simply coming to the debate with what you have at hand. You have to remember that debates where the participants provide entertainment is a test of individual skill, not a real clash of ideals in order to decide which course of action is a good idea. By having a transcript of the debate so that the participants can think about what they are going to say in rebuttal, a more rounded argument can be made for both sides of the debate. In short, it provides a method of shedding light on a topic, not generating heat. Too many talk show hosts wish to grab face time so they try to squash their guests and count coup. Plus, too many guests on talk shows, both TV and radio, want to squash the host and count coup. We at KEOS are supposed to educate. What part of "KEOS is owned by Brazos Educational Radio" do you not understand?

The programs I want to do are many. Let me go over some of them.

The major threat to our society right now is as I have said, the Irreconcilables. The problem in this community right now is that we do not know whether our Muslim neighbors will in fact give aid and comfort to Irreconcilables who might come here to do terrorist acts. I do not honestly believe that local Muslims are plotting to blow up Post Oak Mall, but I do have worries that they might shelter people who would want to do that.

I want to summon a Muslim cleric and before an audience do an interview and then have him give his talk. Then I will look at what he said and produce a CD with my rebuttal and deliver it to him. He will then produce a CD with his rebuttal. Everything will be transcribed and put out on my blog. He and I would then take questions. I am unsure how long the questions would last. They cannot go on forever, but we shall see how long they will last.

The topic of debate is of course the Danish cartoons.

The way I envision it, I shall ask the guy some questions that have been bothering me about the whole War of Terror. And I shall ask Muslims in the audience to chip in their two cents worth. No telling what will happen.

I was thinking that I would not have police there. Doesn't that sound dangerous? The whole point of the exercise is to find out whether Islam locally is dominated by violent people. Of course that is a silly way to approach the problem, but it is my working plan. I mean, anyone can be violent if pushed far enough. The question becomes: what IS that limit? I don't know, but I surely would like to find out.

What that entails is to show some symbols to the Muslims and explain what they really mean. Then get feedback from the audience. That word semiotics comes up here. Semiotics means the study of symbols. What the symbols mean and what the members of Islam see may be two different things.

The biggest problem I have with Islam right now is that the Irreconcilables remind me of the Borg from Star Trek. I mean, the Borg show up and say, "We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated." The Irreconcilables perceive that they must convert everyone to Islam. The Borg on Star Trek are trying to do something great by their standards. Their position in Star Trek is that by having everyone the same, poverty and want can be eliminated. The problem I have with the Irreconcilables is that they want to convert everyone to Islam, but the future they offer is one where you have a tiny, wealthy ruling class, a tiny middle class and everyone else is wretchedly poor.

Since this is such an important topic, I would hope that it would be on multiple programs. The problem I am having is that Islam and the West are not communicating real well.

Another program I want to do is concerning the Living Wage Coalition. Thomas Sowell, a respected economist out at the Hoover Institute, has made the point that the Living Wage is a stupid idea. I want to get Living Wage Coalition in here and have them tell me why they think the way they do. I had to do some research as to why the Living Wage will not work. It turns out that the Living Wage causes unskilled laborers to stay poor and unemployable.

Then there is the program where I get the County chairman of the Democratic Party and ask him some questions about the goals of the Democratic Party. Howard Dean is the head of the national Democratic Party. By the standards of the Right he has lost his mind. It also looks like that the Democratic Party has drifted so far Left that a good portion of the public is starting to get turned off by their rhetoric. With the cartoon jihad, the pacifist tendency of the Democrats has caused a number of people to decide that pacifism and appeasement is not an option.

I really would like to have the chair of Habitat for Humanity come by so we could discuss my project for increasing output of houses. Oh, yeah, you haven't heard of that idea. I think we can build Habitat houses prior to sporting events. I have some ideas on how to involve a large number of fans in building houses for locals.

And let's see. Could I get the chair of the NAACP to come in and discuss race? Wouldn't that be kind of weird? I mean, actually have a debate about why Blacks are poor? I think that would be a really interesting program.

The issue of Communism has pretty well been answered, but I still think that a debate with a Communist about how Communism could be made to work would really interest me. I mean, to me Communism is totally unworkable, because it kills off high tech. I would kind of like to know how a real Communist would handle that problem.

Boy, I would really like to bring in the ACLU and debate their attack on the Boy Scouts. By my standards there is no excuse for that behavior. The cover story appears to be that gays are being barred from Scout Master positions, so the Boy Scouts are bigoted homophobes. At least that's what it looks like to me.

I don't know who to bring in to discuss the Hiring Hall Association. Yeah, yeah, you haven't heard me mention that project either. The idea is to raise the skill level of poor people so they can get a better job. I'm going to have to think on that one.

Whether you know it or not, South Dakota just passed a law that makes it illegal to get an abortion. I would like to get Planned Parenthood in here and debate the issue. I would also like to understand why killing a baby is a good idea. I never have gotten the reasoning for abortion. You have got to realize and so should they that Roe vs Wade will be overturned in as little as three years. Despite whet you have been told, abortion will not be made illegal by overturning Roe vs. Wade. State legislatures will have to grapple with the abortion issue. If Planned Parenthood is not willing to come up with better reasons why abortion should be legal than the ones I have heard so far, then Texas too will outlaw abortions. I am hoping that the person they send will tell me why prenatal adoption is such a bad idea.

The environmentalist have always bothered me. On one hand they want the environment pristine clean, but the tools they want to use to do that do not work. I want to know why environmentalists are so against drilling off shore. If we did drill off shore, then we could lower the price of oil to $6/barrel.

Anyway. Those are my goals. I think some of them are unattainable, BUT goals SHOULD be unattainable at times. Tonight has been a very short night, because I have failed to do show preparation.

That's the way it goes.

Come in here MacKenzie. The microphone is now yours.

MacKenzie Pequa the Third will now take over and serve up an eclectic mix of
music for the rest of the night.

Take it away, Mac.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Index

2006-03-05T07:10:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Index

Segment 1: Short opening monologue dealing with an email from Stan Swiniarski

Segment 2: The port acquisition by Dubai Ports World controversy and why it is a silly waste of time

Segment 3: Reiterate the guest editorial for the Eagle and discuss it

Segment 4: William F. Buckley of the National Review has thrown in the towel on Iraq and now advocates withdrawal

Segment 5: Discuss Newt Gingrich's 21st Century Contract with America

NOTE: I do not claim that all of the above is original. Where I have been able to do so, I have given links. If I have plagerized someone else's works without attribution, please give me the link and I shall make an update.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 1

2006-03-05T07:00:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 1

As I have said quite a few times, I perceive myself to be alone here in the station most of the time. Just me, the sound Board and the microphone. I had hoped that people would go out to my blog and make comments so that I could create some fresh insights into what I had said before.

Well, I got at least one guy to show up at my blog. He sent me email. I was happy about that. On January 2, I did a show based mostly on songs by Stan Swiniarski. So what happened was that Stan sent me an email thanking me for using his music on my show. He had some quibbles about my interpretation of his music, but it was a nice email. You too can leave me notes on my blog or send me email, BUT... I doubt your existence, so it does not matter.

Tonight's program may be kind of short. I have been messing up by not spending enough time preparing to do the show. I just cannot seem to figure out how to do what I want the program to do which is spark debate.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 2

2006-03-05T06:50:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 2

Eileen last week brought up the port acquisition by Dubai Ports World. Initially I thought it was a very stupid idea, but like everything else, it's the devil in the details. Things are not as they seem. The problem with the deal is that the symbols were wrong in the initial new releases. The words "take over the ports" were used instead of "lease space in the ports".

Have you been down south of town? There's a place called the Jockey Lot. It is a flea market, that is people come together to sell stuff. The Jockey Lot management makes it money by renting stalls in their facility. The people who rent the stalls do not control the security and they do not dictate who can and cannot come onto the property. The analogy of course is silly, because the Jockey Lot does not control one of our ports where a nuclear device might appear at some point in history. But there are similarities.

Here's what really happened. Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. of England was bought out by Dubai Ports World of the United Arab Emirates. In short, P&O was taken over by DP World. P&O had leases on some terminals in 6 or maybe 21 ports in the U.S. Almost all the employees in the U.S. ports will be kept on. The Americans in our unions will unload the ships. The only new employees that COULD be slipped in by DP World are upper level management. Each of them has to pass through checks by our government. The containers coming into these terminals are checked by the Coast Guard and the Customs Service.

The problem so far is that the gains to be realized by the deal have not been examined too carefully. We are in a war with the Irreconcilables that will span 30 to 50 years. Along the way we will have to ally ourselves with scum bags. The UAE is far from being a country with people who can be called scum bags, but they have done some stupid things in the past that make people in this country assume that they ARE scum bags. They will not recognize Israel. They had two citizens who were among the 19 who flew the airplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the downed craft in Pennsylvania. Banks in their country laundered money for the Irreconcilables. They have members of the royal family and in the government who back the Irreconcilables. During the Cartoon Jihad controversy the government came out with releases that oozed wounded pride. Just today we hear that they confiscated social studies books, because the books stated as fact that the conquest of India by Islam was one of the bloodiest pages in history, yet the book said that Israel was the only true democracy in the Middle East. All of these examples make you wonder about the UAE.

On the other hand, the U.S. Navy allows port leave in Dubai. The Navy docks their ships in the UAE. The UAE houses our U2's and Global Hawks. If the UAE was that big a threat, why are our most sensitive aircraft based there?

One of the major arguments against the deal is that the UAE could pass along security information to the Irreconcilables. Guess what? They already have the information. Plus, you must realize that it isn't the receiving port that counts. It's the sending port. DB World has been running ports that send stuff to us for years.

The UAE has been invaluable in our fight on the Irreconcilables. Prior to 9/11, the UAE was paying protection money to the Irreconcilables. By siding with us, they no longer have to do that. That hasn't stopped some citizens of the UAE from supporting the Irreconcilables, but the government has stopped doing so.

Again, we are in a war that spans 30-50 years. Along the way we have to have allies to help us. If we are to have the UAE on our side, we have to trust them enough so that they can betray our trust and reveal themselves as our enemies. Are you getting this? We HAVE to find out whether the UAE is on our side, because we have a nasty war to fight. If they are on the other side, then we need to know that... BUT there is a problem with this whole analysis.

DB World is one company in a country called United Arab Emirates. Just as it is insane to hold the Jutland Post responsible for the behavior of the country of Denmark, it is also insane to hold DB World responsible for the behavior of the UAE. Yes, I did mean to say it that way. How can you hold a company responsible for the actions of its government AND its other citizens? Got me.

Do I say that the DP World takeover is a risk free venture? Nope... It has some risks attached to it. I suggest that, if you have problems with this venture that you have the brakes on your car inspected tomorrow. As soon as you can. It's important... to YOU. The brakes on your car could go out tomorrow and kill you. If you have them inspected, you could save your own life. But wait... How do you know that the brake inspector knows what he is doing? How do you know that the new brakes he puts in will be of good quality? OoooOoo... There are SO MANY risks. The odds that the UAE will betray us is about the same as your brakes going out tomorrow.

Okay. What I am getting at is that we cannot live a risk free life. It is impossible. The UAE and DP World have shown themselves to date to be relatively loyal allies. They are not solid, but how could they be? They have enemies on their borders who could give them a hard time. The big deal with the UAE is that they are in the Strait of Hormuz. If the Iranians decide to cut off the oil in the Middle East, it is at the Strait of Hormuz they will strike. Ummm... You DID know that the Iranians are threatening to build an Islamic bomb like the Pakistanis. They threaten to close the exit to the Persian Gulf at the Strait of Hormuz, if we get in their face or attack their nuclear facilities. We need the UAE right now to offset the Iranians.

Thank God, the Bush people could get DP World to agree to a 45 day review period before Congress, so everyone could climb down from their high horse and move on. That compromise is not perfect, but it has all the earmarks of a good compromise, i.e. no one is satisfied with the compromise, but no one can think of a better one.

There is one other thing I find fascinating about this story. DP World is MUCH more efficient at transferring cargo from ships to truck trailers than P&O was. The unions HATE efficient companies who bring change. After all, evil corporations are out to screw the little guy whenever they can. And evil foreign corporations are the worst. DP World may eliminate some jobs, so the unions have pulled out all the stops to head off this deal. In addition, there is an American company that does what DP World does. They got outbid by DP World for P&O. They are suing to stop the deal. They couldn't compete in the market place, so they are using political means to get what they want. In short, things are NOT as they seem.

There is risk in this deal, but life is filled with risks. Either we take some risks so that in the future we don't have to depend on an untried ally or we do not. If some Americans die today, because DP World leased some of the terminals in some of our ports, then that's the way it goes. I shall pray for the families of the lost and advocate the punishment of the United Arab Emirates. If you feel that we will never have another terrorist attack, then you are deluded. We have to test the UAE. All of us in this country are on the front lines. If we forget that, I am quite certain that the terrorists will remind us. We need to know that the UAE is on our side... right now.

I do not denigrate the fears of the people who would prefer that all our ports were handled by Americans. Hmmm... If you absolutely have to have a riskless life, then I say "go for it", but don't get me involved. I live in a world where you just have to take some risks... sometimes.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 3

2006-03-05T06:27:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 3

Two weeks ago on this program I attacked the Eagle for not posting the Danish cartoons that have been causing so many riots around the world. Marion Michael Morrison once said that if you are going to insult a man, you should do it to his face.

This weekend I modified that attack and sent it to Eagle as a guest editorial. Of course they will not print it and it would be incorrect behavior for me to expect them to do so. It is one thing for you to allow a man to insult you. It is quite another to allow him to do it on your dime. Plus you should know that the Eagle supports KEOS by printing our advertisements, so I really was biting the hand that feeds me. On the other hand, us radicals are ALWAYS biting the hand that feeds us.

Here is the guest editorial I wrote:

Very few newspapers in the United States have published the cartoons from the Jyllands-Posten. The United States newspapers make all kinds of excuses as to why they do not publish the cartoons, but it boils down to fear and self-interest.

Shakespeare wrote a play called Hamlet. The play was a dreary thing about a Danish prince who had to make a decision. A hard decision. In Hamlet Act 3, Scene 1, Hamlet says in one of the most memorable soliloquies in the English language:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

I was struck with how much this soliloquy fits the present situation. When you strip away all the posturing by our media, the members of the media are frightened. They fear death. Just as with Hamlet, they are saying that they WILL "suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" instead of taking "up arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing... end them". Why? Because the media cannot take up arms and end the oppression of the Irreconcilables of radical Islam.

When we as a civilization gave newspapers a special place in our society, we expected them to inform us about the issues of the day. In short, we as a society have an implied contract with newspapers. Right now, the issue before us is the cartoons. By my standards, newspapers in general and the Eagle in particular have failed to live up to their implied contract with the American people.

Yet we ask too much of our newspapers. Print media is a dying industry. Towns used to have more than one newspaper. Cities, like New York used to have twenty or thirty newspapers, each with a specific audience. Nowadays newspapers are just a means of making a living. The editors have obligations to the stockholders of the newspaper to guard the lives of their employees and of the buildings where the newspaper is printed. Newspapers, like the Eagle, pay little to their employees. The Eagle has a high turnover rate. Employees of the Eagle move to other towns to get on with their careers in a dying industry. If an employee at the Eagle were offered a position in the PR department at McDonalds, why should they not take it? Surely the job would pay more and, after all, journalism is just a job nowadays. It is not a vocation. It is not a calling. It is just a method of making money. Journalism is just a method of passing the time between graduation from college... and retirement.

Just as we would never dream of asking McDonalds employees to die for the company, so we should not expect members of the Eagle staff to put their lives on the line for something as silly as freedom of the press. I mean, it's just a set of cartoons published in a little newspaper in a town in Denmark about the size of Bryan-College Station. I doubt very seriously that the Jyllands-Posten has a circulation any bigger than the Eagle. I could be mistaken, though.

Would Donnis Baggett be stupid enough to have done as Flemming Rose and tried to address the issue of self-censorship where Islam is concerned? Of course not. The Eagle has covered the Iraq War too closely. All who work at the Eagle have seen or heard what happens to members of the press who dare confront the adherents of radical Islam. We have too many of our local citizens who have been to Iraq and come back with stories of what it is like over there, fighting the jihadis. Too many of the Aggies have come back missing legs and arms. No REAL journalist would want to do that. My God, journalism is just a job. If they wanted to fight in the War on Terror, members of the Eagle staff would have signed up to go overseas and fight in the military. The very idea that the staff of the Eagle should have to confront straight on the evil that is radical Islam is just... silly.

Plus all at the Eagle know what happens to journalists who confront the bullies who dress themselves up in the clothes of Muslim victimhood. Why the Eagle could be sued by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for showing disrespect for Islam, if they dared confront the issue of self-censorship. If Clear Channels Communications cannot stand up to CAIR, why should the Eagle even try? I mean, the corporation who owns the Eagle would just cave at the first whiff of a lawsuit. The corporation is in it for the money, just as the employees at the Eagle are in the newspaper business for the money. Why should they put themselves in financial jeopardy just to... do much of anything? The shareholders of the corporation demand that the publisher of the Eagle optimize profits, not generate bad PR. It's just a silly idea to expect the Eagle to step up and enter this debate.

With examples like this of course only a fool would take a strong stance for freedom of the press when dealing with the Danish cartoons.

Legend says that on the night of March 5, 1836 William Travis called his troops together and gave a speech. Can you see him there in your mind? Standing tall with a torch in one hand and a sword in the other. He explained that the Mexicans had committed themselves to kill everyone in the Alamo. He drew a line in the sand at the Alamo and invited the members of his command to commit themselves to die to the last man rather than surrender to the Mexicans. It is said that all but one crossed the line. Jim Bowie had his litter taken across the line.

It is said that the Mexicans under Santa Anna were much put upon. The gringos had shown no respect to the Mexicans and Santa Anna was there to remind them that they had sworn some oaths to Mexico. The Texans were fighting to restore the Constitution of 1824. The two sides were irreconcilable.

Because the Alamo held up the advance of the Mexican army for a thirteen days, Sam Houston was able to get his troops and equipment together and fight a month later at San Jacinto. The Alamo fell on March 6, 1836. San Jacinto ended the War of Texas Independence on April 21, 1836. If Travis and the others had not died to the last man at the Alamo, the war could have gone on for years. By making a stand at the beginning of major hostilities, the Texans forestalled a long bitter war.

Today, we have entered into a war that spans thirty to fifty years. George Bush said this to the American people in his speech of September 21, 2001. Most people ignored that clear warning that the Irreconcilables of radical Islam would not be defeated quickly. Too many people in this country have deluded themselves with the idea that the Irreconcilables are fighting for a cause where they can be appeased.

Rudyard Kipling said it best in a poem called Dane-geld:
IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
    To call upon a neighbour and to say:
"We invaded you last night---we are quite prepared to fight,
    Unless you pay us cash to go away."

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
    And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
    And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
    To puff and look important and to say:
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
    We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
    But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
    You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
    For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
    You will find it better policy to says:

"We never pay any one Dane-geld,
    No matter how trifling the cost,
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
    And the nation that plays it is lost!"
The Irreconcilables are not asking just for our money. They are asking for our freedom. They are asking that we admit that they are superior to us AND that we will adhere to their rules whether we become Muslims or not. As I said before, the Irreconcilables will not give up until all opposition is killed, converted to Islam, made second class citizens or enslaved. To believe otherwise is silliness. Pay not danegeld at all or you will rue the day you did.

I personally feel that there is a way to address the issue of the cartoons in the pages of the Eagle. I say on Sunday, March 5, 2006 that the Eagle publish the cartoons and invite debate about why Muslims are offended by these silly cartoons.

Yet there is a more important issue to be debated in this community. In the pages of the editorial page and in town meetings, we as citizens of this community should ask our Muslim neighbors whether they are Muslims first or Texans and Americans first. Some Muslims perceive that they are part of the Ummah, the community of Muslims. They do not recognize national boundaries.

America cannot afford such an attitude. We are not a nation of blood and bone. We do not have centuries of common heritage. We as a nation are founded on the ideas and ideals embodied in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. If we as a nation continue to have an unassimilated minority who do not recognize that simple fact, then we cannot really trust our Muslim neighbors. If their loyalty is forever to their religion first and their country second, then there is always the chance that in a crisis they will choose their religion over this country.

The change that Islam must make is simple, yet profound. All other faiths in this country have had to make it. It is time and past time for Islam in this country to also commit to the ideal that there are as many Paths to God as there are grains of sand on all the beaches of the world.

I can prove this assertion quite easily with a strange question: Have you looked at the night sky?

There are as many stars in the sky as there grains of sand on all the beaches of the world. That of course means that God is kind of big. How can one book of any religion encompass the entire sky? All religions should be able to agree that God wrote the sky, created the heavens and the earth and all the stars in the sky. If God is that big, how can you possibly believe that one book or a set of books can match the sky in size and complexity? When I look at the night sky, I have to ask myself whether the God cares which Path to God a mortal takes. Somewhere along the line, someone has mistaken the goal of reaching God for the Path to reaching God. Is the Path so important that the goal should be ignored? What is more, why is it necessary to destroy all the other Paths to God?

I say that those who walk the Path of Islam to God are deserving of respect, because they have Chosen to walk a hard Path. I am just unwilling to allow the members of Islam to dictate the Path I Choose to reach God. I am also unwilling to allow the members of Islam to dictate the direction of the Path I Choose to reach God. If the members of Islam in this community cannot accept that they have no right to dictate which Path to God is best, then they should leave this country and find one where members of that polity believe the assertion that Muslims have a right to dictate how non-Muslims act.

I am not saying "My Country, Love It or Leave It". I am simply stating as fact that the United States cannot exist with an established religion. In addition, the United States cannot exist with a court system for non-Muslims and a Sharia court system for Muslims. It cannot be done. Any who believe that our country can survive under such a regime are insane or... Irreconcilables.

I have decided that too many people in this community are acting like irresolute Hamlets and not enough people are acting like the people embodied in the poem by Rudyard Kipling. The ghost of William Travis has called to me across the gulf of time and I will step across the line. I will debate the issue with you in the pages of the Eagle editorial pages or in public meetings.

I would close by saying that the ghost of William Barret Travis sends his regards and asks politely that you volunteer to step across the line. I cannot get more polite than that.

And then at the end, I gave my name, email address and P.O. Box.

I must admit that I am very proud of that editorial. I have always found this generation of newspaper people to be very self righteous. The thinking in the media most particularly newspapers is that they ARE part of a higher calling. Yet, the newspapers are now part of the corporate world of stockholders and risk averse behavior. Throwing in McDonalds was a particularly nasty insult, because so many on the Left feel that working at McDonalds is the lowest of low job even in their PR department. Sometimes my humor gets away with me.

What I wanted to accomplish with that editorial was to call the Muslims of this community to debate their place IN this community. I had envisioned getting some leader or spokesman from the local Muslim community to come here to KEOS and have an interview and then a debate. The problem I am having is that the concept of debate has been degraded. Debate is NOT where the participants try to convince each other of the rectitude of their position. No, debate is where the opposing sides state their positions and the audience makes up its mind. I want a situation where I interview the guy, debate him, put a transcript of the debate out on my blog, and THEN have questions for both sides from the audience via the blog. The answers to the questions would be very interesting.

If you start with the belief that there is a God, then I really think you should memorize that question: Have you looked at the night sky? Yeah, that allows you to puncture the pontificating of anyone who says that their religion is the One True Path. There can be no One True Path to God. It's a silly idea. There can be a True Path for you, but what is the One True Path for you, may NOT be the One True Path for someone else. For a preacher or imam, to say that one size fits all is acceptable to me. What I have problems with is to actually use force to make people walk that One True Path. People must volunteer to walk a Path to God. If we are to have Free Will, then it is necessary for all of us to respect other people's choices up to a point.

How to determine when the other guy's choice of Path is an affront to civilized behavior is kind of hard. Up until the Christian era, human sacrifice was common throughout the world. People used to eat other people as part of religious ceremonies.

Some of the rites in some of the sects of Islam are very difficult for us to swallow. In Saudi Arabia, they beheading people for switching from Islam to another religion. During some of the religious ceremonies in Iraq and Iran, people strike their backs with specialized blades in order to bleed. Throughout the Muslim world they chop the hand off of thieves. Wait, you did know that church and state are one in Islam, so the courts are done by the clergy. This means that all the laws of Sharia are religious laws and may not be questioned... And that in itself is very strange to us. The only problem I have with any of these religious practices is when someone is required to be a part of them under duress.

If the Eagle will not publish my editorial, then I shall have to find some other way to get this out in the open. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Until the Muslims in this community and all across America show some signs that they do not agree with the Irreconcilables, then Muslims in this country will have to be viewed with suspicion. The way insurgents work is to get help from locals. If the insurgents who infiltrate into this country cannot find locals to house and support them, then they cannot do acts of terrorism easily.

It all boils down to one thing. Too many of our media are risk averse. We are on the front lines in this war. If you do not understand that, then you are deluded. The media in this country looks at the death and destruction over seas and just does not want to be responsible for it. The problem is that we cannot avoid that destruction. The Irreconcilables really and truly are not willing to pack it in. They will be fighting us for the next 30-50 years. Our media can support our cause or not.

That is what I really want to do. Whether I can get anyone to listen to me, I do not know. After all, I am but a voice from the velvet black calling to you across the gulf of our mutual incomprehension.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 4

2006-03-05T05:58:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 4

Something weird happened on this last Friday. William F. Buckley of the National Review threw in the towel on Iraq. You have to understand why that is a big event for people on the Right. William F. Buckley started the modern Conservative movement in 1955. For him to say that we have lost in Iraq is equivalent to Walter Cronkite saying in 1968 that the Tet Offensive was a massive defeat, when in actuality the Tet Offensive was one of the American military's major victories.

The article in the National Review is kind of long, but the meat of the article is this:

A problem for American policymakers - for President Bush, ultimately - is to cope with the postulates and decide how to proceed.

One of these postulates, from the beginning, was that the Iraqi people, whatever their tribal differences, would suspend internal divisions in order to get on with life in a political structure that guaranteed them religious freedom.

The accompanying postulate was that the invading American army would succeed in training Iraqi soldiers and policymakers to cope with insurgents bent on violence.

This last did not happen. And the administration has, now, to cope with failure. It can defend itself historically, standing by the inherent reasonableness of the postulates. After all, they govern our policies in Latin America, in Africa, and in much of Asia. The failure in Iraq does not force us to generalize that violence and antidemocratic movements always prevail. It does call on us to adjust to the question, What do we do when we see that the postulates do not prevail - in the absence of interventionist measures (we used these against Hirohito and Hitler) which we simply are not prepared to take? It is healthier for the disillusioned American to concede that in one theater in the Mideast, the postulates didn't work. The alternative would be to abandon the postulates. To do that would be to register a kind of philosophical despair. The killer insurgents are not entitled to blow up the shrine of American idealism.

I had to look up that word 'postulate' in the dictionary. Sometimes ol' Bill forgets that us mere mortals are not as widely read as he is. Postulate means, 'To assume or assert the truth, reality, or necessity of, especially as a basis of an argument.' In other words, the Bush administration has told everybody that these two things will be true at some point in time. Buckley is saying that even though only a short time has passed since Iraq has become a country by our standards, the time is up and we must admit that Iraq will never be one country, nor will the Iraqi military EVER be able to handle security.

I had to read that article three times to understand what he was talking about, because the assertion that the Iraqi army is NOT taking up the slack flies in the face of everything I am getting from our military with boots on the ground. Most of you do not follow the MilBlog, that is the on-line journals of our soldiers in Iraq. These men and women in our military are saying that the Iraqi military is slowly but surely shaping up. The best information I have is that the Iraqi military will be able to provide for their own security at some point in time. Our military does NOT view the situation as hopeless. If the grunts were hopeless, the MilBlogs would show that. They do not.

What is REALLY strange about this article is that Victor Davis Hanson on the same page as Buckley's article refutes the claim that the situation is hopeless over there. Victor Davis Hanson has just returned from visiting Iraq where he saw first hand what is going on there.

Buckley's first assertion, that the Iraqi people will never pull together seems on its face to be incorrect as well. When the great golden dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra was blown up this last week, there were Shi'ite riots almost immediate. Many Sunni mosques were attacked. Sunni and Shi'ite leaders jumped in and just as immediately tried to calm things down. Instead of the leaders screaming for civil war, the leaders on both sides are calling for unity. The Iraqi bloggers on the ground in Iraq are saying that most people believe that Al Quaeda destroyed the mosque. Subsequent attacks in the southern Iraq just confirmed the impression in most Iraqi's minds.

On the same page of the National Review web site, a guy made the point that in India at one time Muslims were killing Hindus quite a bit. Now, the tribal aspect of their lives are behind them. It has taken about fifty years for that to happen. There still is violence between the groups, but we have riots in this country as well for reasons that are even stupider than religion. To expect Iraqis to suddenly shed their tribal outlook is expecting too much. On the other hand, that is what is happening albeit slowly.

I must admit that the press in this country is doing a bang-up job of painting Iraq as a hopeless case. Our military really and truly hates the United States press because of that. It seems to our troops that the media hates them back. Except Fox, of course. Ollie North has made it impossible for the military to hate Fox.

Maybe you didn't notice this, but a huge number of the signs you are seeing at the Muslim protests are in English. The Irreconcilables really know how to manipulate the press. They are thoroughly convinced that they can get our press to make the case that Iraq and the entire War on Terror is a bad idea. They are counting on the press to force the American people to retreat.

Oh, by the way, William F. Buckley did not say in his article that we should retreat, he only said that we have failed. He advocates that we find a new approach for the War of Terror, because the present one has failed. Walter Cronkite advocated that we cut and run both in Vietnam and in Iraq. I am not sure if Buckley is right, but I refuse to rule out the possibility that he might be correct.

For instance, the U.S. needs to do something to counter the media war that the Irreconcilables have launched against us. So far we have not done a good job of countering their attacks on us in the media both here and abroad.

I just kind of thought it was a weird concept that William F. Buckley had come out against the policies of President George Bush. The thinking on the Left seems to be that all people on the Right worship the ground Bush walks on. The actuality is that most people on the Right like Bush, but think he makes some boneheaded mistakes occasionally. Big government conservatism is a REALLY stupid idea.

What really gets me about reporting of the destruction of the Askariya shrine is that the news media seems almost to demand that there be a civil war in Iraq. Every hour the news people seemed to hold their breaths hoping that new and more horrible things would happen. The Iraqis are not good with the behavior of our news media. Most of the people know that the Wahabists from Saudi Arabia are behind the bombing. The destruction of the Sunni mosques was an over reaction to a fatwa put out by one if the Shi’ite mullahs who on the surface was trying to calm the waters, but in reality was making a call to destroy the Sunni mosques.

Reports are now coming in that like a huge violent storm, the destruction came and went. Baghdad is getting back to normal. The Iraqi military is being praised for doing a good job. The police are getting a lot of criticism for not doing their job. This is not a civil war. It looks like to be that the Iraqis have come out a small amount stronger than before.

Anyway. I am not willing to accept that we have failed in Iraq... yet. I am going to have to get reports from the native Iraqis and our military who are there that the situation is hopeless, before I accept that as fact.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 5

2006-03-05T05:49:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 27, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 5

Newt Gingrich has a new book called Winning the Future: 21st Century Contract with America. Newt is setting himself up to be the next President of the United States. The Presidential election starts this fall after the November elections.

In his book, Newt lays out five things that need to be done to make America a better place. Each of the five is layed out in the context of trying to harden America to fight a long term war.

The first says, "We must commit to a long war to defeat the terrorists and tyrants who would destroy America." The problem with that goal is that we have a huge number of people in this country who cannot and will not believe that we are at war. The cartoon jihad should have awakened everyone, but that is not the case.

The question then becomes, "Are we at war with the Irreconcilables?" If the answer for you is that we are not at war, then Newt is just nuts. I have been stating as fact that we are in a war with the Irreconcilables that will span a 30-50 year period. Newt has also come to that conclusion. Some of the people in this country particularly those on the moveon.org, DailyKos and democratic Underground web sites are convinced that undermining the President will achieve some positive goal. What that goal is, I cannot fathom. We cannot appease the Irreconcilables. We must defeat them.

The second goal in Newt Gingrich's book is "We must reestablish that our rights come from the Creator and that an America that has driven God out of the public arena is an America on the way to decay and defeat." If we are in a religious war, then we have to make our religious life better or the Irreconcilables will win in the end. This is just self evident to me. If you honestly believe that the worst threats to America come from evangelical Christians passing judgement and exhorting people to better than they are, then you have your priorities screwed up. If we drive out all religion, the Irreconcilables will be happy to fill the void. Such a thought is very strange, but children seek certainty. In the void caused by a lack of all religions Islam could become attractive to them.

The third goal of the 21st Century Contract with America is "We must insist on a patriotic immigration and patriotic education based on classic American history and the wisdom of the Founding Fathers and Abraham Lincoln." I find this one kind of interesting because it flies in the face of multiculturalism. For years people have been saying that if our children are raised viewing America as an evil in the world then how can we defend ourselves against the media war that the Irreconcilables have launched against us.

The fourth goal Newt Gingrich sets is "We must transform our domestic institutions in order to harness modern science and technology to create jobs, wealth and lead the world economy into the 21st century." The efficiencies that can be realized by technology have not filtered into all aspects of our lives, particularly the practice of medicine and our government. Despite what you might think, we have just scratched the surface in many new fields like nanotechnology and the implications derived from the Human Genome project. There is an old Chinese curse. It goes, "May you live in interesting times." We are cursed to live in interesting times. We either adapt or we go under. Technology is another way of wiping the Irreconcilables out.

The final goal is "We must establish the opportunities for a personal Social Security account, a portable pension account and a personal health savings account, so that the wealth we create during our working lives is wealth we control." This is one of the scariest ones for most people, because too many people are used to the government taking care of these functions. I personally feel that government should only do those things that private enterprise cannot or will not do. Why is the government doing any of these functions? Private enterprise can and will provide these services. Why is the government providing them? I don't know the answer to that question. I know for a fact that private enterprise could do a better job.

I went over these five goals because they are the basis for Newt Ginrich's run for the Presidency in 2008. If he does not run, they will still be the basis for the Republican agenda for the next decade or so.

Well, that is about all I have to say tonight. I will turn everything over to MacKinzie Pequa the Third now. She will entertain you for the rest of the night with an eclectic mix of music.

Come on Mac you can do it.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 20, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Index

2006-03-04T13:47:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 20, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Index

Segment 1: Some of the background of the Arab-Israeli Wars and the Cartoon Jihad

Segment 2: Federalist Paper Number 10 and its implications in the factional fighting between the Left and the Right

NOTE: I do not claim that all of the above is original. Where I have been able to do so, I have given links. If I have plagerized someone else's works without attribution, please give me the link and I shall make an update.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 20, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 1

2006-03-04T13:39:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 20, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 1

As I have said before, very few people are listening to this program. I have been wondering why I am doing the program at all. The goals I set for the project are very high, but it doesn't seem to be working out. Most likely I am sitting here alone talking to myself. Ah, well, we shall assume someone is out there listening, even though I doubt it.

Let's look. The Cartoon Jihad has legs. It's continuing. It's claiming more victims as it goes along.

This Italian right wing ambassador to Lybia bought a t-shirt with one of the Danish cartoons on it. When he showed up on TV, the Italian embassy in Lybia was attacked. Over ten people were killed by the Libyan security service. The Italian ambassador initially refused to resign, because his party has always been against immigration. Finally he had to go. I've got to agree with that the government of the United States and all governments have got to keep themselves as far away from this craziness as possible. For any official of the government, any government to throw fuel on the fire is kind of stupid.

Having said that, I still think the newspapers in the United States should print the cartoons with calls for debate. Civilized people debate. They do not run out on the streets and burn buildings.

Flemming Rose, the editor at the Jutland Post who started all this, wrote an article in his own newspaper that was reprinted in the Washington Post explaining that he printed the cartoons to spark debate in his community. He wanted to open a dialogue with moderate Muslim voices in his country who wanted to integrate into Danish society. He wrote in his article, "When I visit a mosque, I show my respect by taking off my shoes. I follow the customs, just as I do in a church, synagogue or other holy place. But if a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission. And that is incompatible with a secular democracy." I sent him email saying that I admired his stance. I doubt if he will read it.

I said last week that Flemming Rose got fired. I was mistaken. My source was a mainstream media report and it was incorrect. He was not.

We are in the midst of a test of wills. The Irreconcilables have studied Vietnam and are convinced that they can break the will of the American people. It has been said many times before that generals are always fight the last war. So it is with our enemies. They expect submission because in the past that is what they got.

Let me go over some things dealing with this conflict. They're kind of random thoughts.

As I've said before we are in a clash of cultures where the Irreconcilables are absolutely convinced that if they destroy us and establish the caliphate, they will be able to take over the world and erase all the shame of their past failures. They at once covet our success without understanding its source. The Muslims are absolutely convinced of their rectitude. The idea that we in the West are so successful is a source of confusion to them. I mean, the Qu'ran makes clear that only Muslims are supposed to be rich and powerful. They have been promised for over 1000 years that, if they adhere to the Qu'ran, they will have world domination. The problem that they are encountering is that too many of their young people are willing to be lured away from the One True Path. We in the West have tempted their young and we have to be punished for that.

I was reading an article by Bernard Lewis who is one of the great authorities on Islam in the West. Jews prior to 1948 were treated better by Islam than by the Christians in Europe. The Muslims viewed the Jews as cowards. The Jews had adopted a policy of appeasement throughout their history. Every once in a while the Muslims would have a fundamentalist revival and the Jews would get it in the neck, but they had figured out how to navigate things under the caliphates of the past. Because the Muslims held the Jews in such contempt, they could not think of them as people they had to fear.

When Israel was founded in founded in 1948, almost all the Islamic countries in the Middle East tried to destroy Israel. The first Arab-Israeli war in 1948 ended with the Arab forces totally defeated. The shock throughout the Muslim world was profound. The Muslims were absolutely horrified that 500000 Jews could resist the might of all of the Arab nations in the area. As near as I can tell, the Muslims had the reaction that you would have if your pet poodle attacked and killed your favorite pit bull dog. Oh, that's right, you don't have a pet poodle or a pet pit bull. Well, it was much worse for the psyche of the members of Islam.

The Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973 finished devastated their self-esteem. The Muslims of the Middle East were humiliated because they couldn't even beat the Jews in a standup fight. They felt that they as Muslims were unable to do much of anything right.

Throughout the last 400 years the Muslims have had a history of losing battles with the Christians starting in about 1620. The high water mark for Muslim expansion was September 11, 1683 outside the gates of Vienna, Austria. The Polish military came down from the heights and scattered the Muslim host. With a few exceptions, Muslims have lost against European powers ever since.

Osama bin Laden has many reasons for fighting the United States and the West, but they are religious reasons. The Irreconcilables have just had enough of being humiliated by the West. Basically the Muslims under Muslim rule cannot produce much of anything. They can't even produce the oil they export without foreign supervision of their drilling operations. The GDP of all the Muslim nations put together do not match Spain's GDP. Ummm, you did know that Spain is not known for its powerhouse economy?

What gets me about this is that were the Irreconcilables to gain power and actually establish the new Caliphate, their economies would collapse. The prime example of this is Iran. When you look at Iran under the Shah, the country was making an effort to modernize. The Shah was not a nice guy. His policies were bad and he deserved to be deposed. The problem is that the mullahs of Iran are not an improvement over the Shah. All the income that Iran gets from oil is spent by the mullahs on themselves, not on improving business. Investments in Iran are impossible because of the deep rooted corruption in the government.

The cartoon jihad is one front in a war that will span 30 to 50 years. The war will not be fought with armies. It will be fought mostly on the cultural front. Islamic armies are not capable of defeating our military. I use that word 'defeat' differently than you think. Defeat is in the mind, not the body.

The only way we can lose is if we attempt to appease the Irreconcilables. If we modify our behavior to suit their tastes, not our own, then we will have lost.

Too many people in this country do not believe that we are at war with an implacable foe. The thinking on the Left is that we can appease the Irreconcilables. I think that is a stupid idea.

People have made the comparison between the War on Terror and the Cold War or even the run up to World War II. Unfortunately it is not exactly the same. The destruction of the fascist causes in Europe, could be done by force of arms. The destruction of Communism was possible because Communism doesn't work as an economic system.

How do you get an entire religion to accept that portions of their holy book are incorrect? I mean, under the Qu'ran, there is adequate passage to support the position that the West is decadent and must be destroyed. People who come out and say that the Irreconcilables are a fringe group with little in the way to back up their position are silly.

In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met with the ambassador of Lybia to Great Britain. The ambassador's reasons for attacking American ships in the Mediterranean were very similar to Osama bin Laden's reasons for attacking us today, except the representative of the Barbary pirates was more sure of his position than Osama bin Laden.

What we're seeing today in the terrorist attacks from the Irreconcilables is not a fringe position. It is mainstream Islamic thought. The cartoon jihad has proved that to any who wants to be convinced.

There are a huge number of people in this country who do NOT want to be convinced that the Irreconcilables mean what they say. I have heard various theories as to why the Left has adopted the position that the Irreconcilables can be placated, but the people who believe that are deluded. The Irreconcilables cannot appeased.

Osama bin Laden is at this moment calling for a long-term truce. Maybe you haven't heard about that. Yeah, yeah, he wants us to stop chasing him. If we stop messing with him, he promises to stop messing with us. Anyone who believes that,... well, I got this bridge in Brooklyn I'll sell you.

You see, the problem I am having is that there are two absolutely different pictures coming out of Iraq depending on who you want to believe. It all has to do with the filter you use to view the stories available. The mainstream media are selling Iraq as a total disaster. The blogosphere is making the point that the moving slowly ahead and gaining strength.

As far as I can see, we are at the same juncture as we were in 1987. Most of you do not remember that. Everyone and his dog was saying that the Soviet Union was solid. Everyone was saying that the Soviets would recover from their economic downturn and pull back from the brink.

Hmmm... That's a really stupid analogy, because the Soviet Union fell. I was trying to say that everyone knows that the Iraqis cannot make it on their own. yet I believe that in two years, everyone will be surprised how well they can handle their own affairs. You have to realize that Northern Ireland was a very violent place for a while. I expect that the level of violence in Iraq will be just as bad as Northern Ireland was for ten or so years. Despite the fact that I expect that much violence, I do not think it will be that bad except around Baghdad.

What I really think will happen is that Iran will fall in the next ten years. Iran will fall because of demographics. The Iranians killed off too many people in the Iran-Iraq War. Their young people are not going to put up with the mullahs forever. Most of you out there are not watching the blogs like I do. It looks like the Iranian people are beaten down. They by and large are not. It looks like that the weirdo in charge Amadingdong... is going to blow up the world with his nuclear weapons. I don't believe it. If we as Americans support the reformers as Bush says he will, then Iran's mullahs' time in power is limited.

Also... Syria has really and truly messed up by assassinating that guy in Lebanon. The reformers in Syria are few, but Asad is not really string in his own country. A big push and he could fall over.

Again, it's 1987. Everyone is seeing things a certain way. The instability in Iraq looks like it will go on and on forever. It won't. Amadingdong's posturing looks like a sign of strength. It isn't. Asad's defiance of the U.N. looks like he is firmly in control. He isn't.

Mark my words. The next two years will be interesting times. Wait... you have heard that Chinese curse have you not? Oh, well. It goes "May you live in interesting times." Well, dudes and dudettes, we are living in interesting times and that is our curse. Those that accept that interesting times are upon us are going to be able to cope with the changes.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 20, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 2

2006-03-04T13:29:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 20, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 2

There's a book called the Federalist Papers. I did not study it in high school, nor in college, but I knew it existed. The Federalist Papers were a set of essays put into the newspapers in 1787 and 1788 in New York City to support the ratification of the Constitution. The by-line for the essays was Publius. Each one of the Federalist Papers had a number.

Federalist Paper Number 10 dealt many things, but it has a warning about factional fighting. Almost all the democracies in history fell because groups of people hardened their positions to such an extent that they would not budge when the other side won the elections. James Madison, the author of Federalist Number 10, defined faction as "a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."

Madison was certain that factional fighting could not easily occur in America because it was unlikely that a given faction could be formed that had cohesion across a broad enough agenda that members would not budge. Because Madison expected our country to be large, he could not believe that there could be a set of ideas or ideals that people would harden around.

When George McGovern was elected as the presidential candidate to face Richard Nixon, he split the Democratic party. His militant pacificism did not appeal to the majority of Democrats. As time has passed, more and more Democrats have switched to being Republicans because they cannot believe that the government has the answers.

I just read an article that stated that people on the Left and Right are becoming more extreme. That is, people on the Left view people on the Right as not just mistaken, but morally bereft and crazy. The people on the Right perceive that the Left is made up of not just people who are mistaken, but morally bereft and most likely crazy.

In short we are entering into a period where factional fighting is possible. The loss at the polls for the Left is not accepted. I mean, many on the Left do not accept that the people have spoken. They perceive that the voters have made a mistake and with the correct packaging their platform will get them elected. In reality, people KNOW what the Left has to offer and do not want to buy.

Look at Air America. When Air America was launched, it was supposed to meet an unmet need. The programs on Air America are strident and VERY few people listen to that channel. Why? It's simple. Hatred of George Bush is not an agenda. The policies of the past are NOT working. Democrats should be willing to look for new solutions for every day problems, but so far there are no new ideas from the Left. Just as Air America has no new ideas, neither does the Left.

If you actually have gone out to web sites, moveon.org, dailyKos or democratic underground, they are starting to kick around the idea of an armed revolt. You see, that's how factional fighting kills a democracy. When one of the factions in a country determines that they cannot win through the ballot box, they take up arms to achieve their goals.

When I started this program, I expected to debate people on the Left about means of positive social change, because the means that the Left wants to use to achieve positive social change will not work. Saying anything else is kind of silly to me. If they were going to work, they would work somewhere in the last 70 years. That means to me that the tools the Left is using will not work.

What I am getting at is that the Left and the Right have to truly debate; not just yell at each other. That's a stupid way to handle the problem. Somewhere along the line someone is going to have to debate the issues honestly. I don't know how it can be done. I know that the present format of the so-called debate is not working. I want to change that. So far I have been unable to figure out how to do that.

Well, that about does it for tonight. McKenzie Pequa the third will now take over. I am quite certain she has a set of music that is sure to please.

Take it away Mac.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Index

2006-03-04T13:20:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Index

Segment 1: An indictment of the media and the Eagle in particular for not publishing the Danish cartoons

Segment 2: How I would set up a headline for publishing the Danish Cartoons

Segment 3: Reiterate that the Irreconcilables cannot be bought off. We best fight them now.

Segment 4: List the new contract with America from Newt Gingrich's "Winning The Future: A 21st century Contract with America"

Segment 5: Social Security is a BAD Investment

Segment 6: Health care under Newt Gingrich's 21st Century Contract with America

NOTE: I do not claim that all of the above is original. Where I have been able to do so, I have given links. If I have plagerized someone else's works without attribution, please give me the link and I shall make an update.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 1

2006-03-04T13:10:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 1

Let's look. The Cartoon Jihad has legs. It's continuing. It's claiming more victims as it goes along.

Let me recap a minute about the train of events that got us here. An author of children's book, Kare Bluitgen, decided to write a children's book about Mohammed. His goal was interfaith understanding. He could not easily find artists to illustrate the children's book. The artists he approached were convinced that they would be killed if they did the book. He finally got an artist to do the art work anonymously.

Enter the Jutland Post. The cultural editor, Flemming Rose, heard about the story and was appalled. He asked 40 artists to come up with cartoons about Mohammed. He got 12 to respond. The paper then published an article about self-censorship. That is, they made the point that freedom of the press must be fought for in order to remain a right.

The Founding Fathers of this country always made this point as well. Rights must be exercised or they are not rights. The individual is given rights by the Creator, BUT it is the individual NOT the government who makes sure rights are protected. No, that's true. If you look at the Bill of Rights, they are rights that the government cannot take. They are not rights that the government is required to defend. Individuals can request that the government defend their rights, but the government is not required to defend them. The government is not supposed to infringe the rights spelled out in OUR Bill of Rights.

So the Jutland Post published the cartoons with the commentary on September 30, 2005. Nothing really happened for a few months.

Now, this is where it gets interesting. The leading imam in Denmark, Ahmed Abu-Laban, was upset by the cartoons. He tried everything he could to rouse his followers to protest the cartoons. He even filed a suit claiming these were blasphemy. In Denmark they still have a law on the books that allows the government to prosecute someone for blasphemy. The police investigated and decided there was no case. So Ahmed Abu-Laban was REALLY upset. He perceived that Muslims in Denmark were being disrespected. He and some of his fellow imams toured the Middle East in late December of 2005 and early January of 2006. In their baggage they had a 43 page booklet showing the cartoons and various other messages that had come to them denigrating their religion. In addition the booklet had three other cartoons that had been FAXed to Ahmed Abu-Laban. These three were NEVER published in the Jutland Post. However, everyone who read the booklet assumed they were.[1]

So in late January, 2006, some imams with an axe to grind with the West issued fatwas, religious rulings, that Denmark had disrespected Mohammed.

Syria had a problem with the West. The Syrian government had allegedly assassinated a Lebanese politician. It looks like they used the cartoon jihad as a means of diverting attention from the investigation into their misdeeds. The Danish and Norwegian embassies have been burned. Condoleezza Rice has issued her own fatwa saying that the United States does not believe that the Syrian mobs were spontaneous. She contends that NOTHING happens in Syria without government backing.

Same thing in Iran. The Iranian government makes the case that THEIR mobs are spontaneous. No one is buying it. Iran is a totalitarian state. No mob forms unless the government allows it to form.

In other parts of the world, there are supposed to be spontaneous riots. I'm having problems with those riots as well, because of the signs they are showing to the cameras. The signs are in... English. Doesn't that bother you? It should. Here are a set of people who have a very low literacy rate in Arabic and they have signs in English that are exactly right for the cameras. That... should bother you. Look, I am not saying that all Muslims are illiterate. I am saying that the signs came from somewhere. They had to be made. Someone had to make them and hand them out. The organization that did that was not doing it on the fly.

As far as I am concerned, the whole problem with these riots is not that the participants are offended, but do they, the mobs, believe they have the right to veto any criticism of Islam... anywhere in the world? By their existence, mobs have been intimidating. Mob rule has always been a tactic to achieve the goals of a movement. Right now that tactic is being deployed to silence debate about the underlying questions on the War on Terror.

Newt Gingrich in his new book, "Winning the future: a 21st century Contract with America", makes the point that the members of radical Islam are more accurately called the Irreconcilables. Here is why. Radical Islam has as its primary goal a new Caliphate which will rule over all the world. Radical Islam cannot and will not accept anything short of total victory over the West. Every human on this planet must accept that Islam is in fact the One True Faith. Only if all humans are killed, converted to Islam, made second class citizens or enslaved, can the world be put to rights. It is impossible to reconcile with someone who holds such a belief.

Let me give you an example. Sayyid Qutb came to Greeley, Colorado, from Egypt in 1948 to attend Colorado State College of Education. Instead of seeing what was there, a small, straight laced, cattle town with a college, he saw a pit of depravity where the sexes mixed unsupervised, no real commitment to religion and a place with no appreciation of the arts. He hated everything we stood for, because we did not agree with how he thought the world should work.

If you are sitting there going, so what, some guy from Egypt hated the United States, big deal. It turns out it is. Sayyid Qutb wrote a book called Milestones which laid out the underlying rationale for radical Islam. His book has influenced Osama bin Lauden and almost all the present leaders of radical Islam. The book also lays out the method whereby Muslims can take over the world. The Irreconcilables have taken it up as their blueprint for world domination.

I recognize that by saying that I sound crazy. I mean, how many times has James Bond been called in to thwart a plan by some evil genius to take over the world. Plans to take over the world are by definition relegated to the realm of fiction. The problem here is that the Irreconcilables believe that they can do it. They believe that God is on their side and thus they cannot fail. If you are out there and you believe that we can be reconciled with radical Islam, I doubt your sanity. Over and over again, I have heard critiques of America like the one from Sayyid Qutb given by members of radical Islam. If the Irreconcilables can look at America and see only a pit of depravity that has to be cauterized, then we cannot get them to leave us alone unless we defeat them.

Very few newspapers in the United States have published the cartoons from the Jutland Post. The United States newspapers make all kinds of excuses as to why they do not publish the cartoons, but it boils down to fear and self-interest.

Shakespeare wrote a play called Hamlet. The play was a dreary thing about a Danish prince who had to make a decision. A hard decision. In Hamlet Act 3, Scene 1, Hamlet says in one of the most memorable soliloquies in the English language:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

I didn't do a very good job reciting Shakespeare, because I am not that good at anything.

I was struck with how much this soliloquy fits the present situation. When you strip away all the posturing by our media, the members of the media are frightened. They fear death. Just as with Hamlet, they are saying that they WILL "suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" instead of taking "up arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing... end them". Why? Because the media cannot take up arms and end the oppression of the Irreconcilables.

When we as a civilization gave newspapers a special place in our society, we expected them to inform us about the issues of the day. In short, we as a society have an implied contract with newspapers. Right now, the issue before us is the cartoons. By my standards, newspapers in general and the Eagle in particular have failed to live up to their implied contract with the American people.

Yet we ask too much of our newspapers. Print media is a dying industry. Towns used to have more than one newspaper. Cities, like New York have twenty or thirty newspapers, each with a specific audience. Nowadays newspapers are just a means of making a living. The editors have obligations to the stockholders of the newspaper to guard the lives of their employees and of the buildings where the newspaper is printed. Newspapers, like the Eagle, pay little to their employees. The Eagle has a high turnover rate. Employees of the Eagle move to other towns to get on with their careers in a dying industry. If an employee at the Eagle were offered a position in the PR department at McDonalds, why should they not take it? Surely the job would pay more and, after all, journalism is just a job nowadays. It is not a vocation. It is not a calling. It is just a method of making money. Journalism is just a method of passing the time between graduation from college... and retirement.

Just as we would never dream of asking McDonalds employees to die for the company, so we should not expect members of the Eagle staff to put their lives on the line for something as silly as freedom of the press. I mean, it's just a set of cartoons published in a little newspaper in a town in Denmark about the size of Bryan-College Station. I doubt very seriously that the Jutland Post has a circulation any bigger than the Eagle.

Would Donnis Baggett be stupid enough to have done as Flemming Rose and tried to address the issue of self-censorship where Islam is concerned? Of course not. The Eagle has covered the Iraq War too closely. All who work at the Eagle have seen or heard what happens to members of the press who dare confront the adherents of radical Islam. We have too many of our local citizens who have been to Iraq and come back with stories of what it is like over there, fighting the jihadis. Too many of the Aggies have come back missing legs and arms. No REAL journalist would want to do that. My God, journalism is just a job. If they wanted to fight in the War on Terror, members of the Eagle staff would have signed up to go overseas and fight in the military. The very idea that the staff of the Eagle should have to confront straight on the evil that is radical Islam is just... silly.

Plus all at the Eagle know what happens to journalists who confront the bullies who dress themselves up in the clothes of Muslim victimhood. Why the Eagle could be sued by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for showing disrespect for Islam, if they dared confront the issue of self-censorship. If Clear Channels Communications cannot stand up to CAIR, why should the Eagle even try? I mean, the corporation who owns the Eagle would just cave at the first whiff of a lawsuit. The corporation is in it for the money, just as the employees at the Eagle are in the newspaper business for the money. Why should they put themselves in financial jeopardy just to... do much of anything? The shareholders of the corporation demand that the publisher of the Eagle optimize profits, not generate bad PR. It's just a silly idea to expect the eagle to step up and enter this debate.

You know, of course, that Flemming Rose of the Jutland Post was fired by the corporation who owns the paper. Nope... Nope... I was mistaken. He was put on indefinite unpaid leave. No one would dare fire someone in the midst of a firestorm like the Jutland Post is involved in... What? You didn't hear about that. The Iranians deny that the Holocaust that claimed 6 million Jews did not occur. The Iranian government is sponsoring a contest for the best cartoons making fun of the Holocaust. Well, Flemming Rose was going to publish some of cartoons about the Holocaust and show why they were evil. He was immediately purged. It is just SOOooOo politically incorrect to deny the Holocaust. My God, he could have accidentally hurt the feelings of the Jews on top of hurting the feelings of the Muslims.

With examples like this of course only a fool would take a strong stance for freedom of the press when dealing with cartoons.

I would point out to you that in 1836, it was kind of stupid to defend the Alamo to the last man. William Travis drew a line in the sand at the Alamo and invited the members of his command to commit themselves to die to the last man rather than surrender to the Mexicans. The Mexicans under Santa Anna were much put upon. The gringos had shown no respect to the Mexicans and Santa Anna was there to remind them that they had sworn some oaths to Mexico. The Texans were fighting to restore the Constitution of 1824. As I said, dying to the last man at the Alamo was kind of a stupid idea, because the Alamo was not strategically important. Surrendering to the Mexicans after a spirited defense should have been what Travis and David Bowie did.

Because the Alamo held up the Mexican for a thirteen days, Sam Houston was able to get his troops and equipment together and fight a month later at San Jacinto. The Alamo fell on March 6, 1836. San Jacinto ended the War of Texas Independence on April 21, 1836. If Travis and the others had not died to the last man at the Alamo, the war could have gone on for years. By making a stand at the beginning of major hostilities, the Texans forestalled a long bitter war.

Today, we have entered into a war that spans thirty to fifty years. George Bush said this to the American people in his speech of September 21, 2001. Most people ignored that clear warning that the Irreconcilables would not be defeated quickly. Too many people in this country have deluded themselves with the idea that the Irreconcilables are fighting for a cause where they can be appeased.

Rudyard Kipling said it best in a poem called Dane-geld:

IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
To call upon a neighbour and to say:
"We invaded you last night---we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to says:

"We never pay any one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost,
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"

The Irreconcilables are not asking just for our money. They are asking for our freedom. They are asking that we admit that they are superior to us AND that we will adhere to their rules whether we become Muslims or not. As I said before, the Irreconcilables will not give up until all opposition is killed, converted to Islam, made second class citizens or enslaved. To believe otherwise is silliness. Pay not danegeld at all or you will rue the day you did.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 2

2006-03-04T12:52:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 2

I personally feel that there is a way to address the issue of the cartoons in the pages of the Eagle. I say on Monday, March 6, 2006 that all across Texas newspapers publish the cartoons and invite debate about why Muslims are offended.

I would have a huge headline above the cartoons saying: Do you know what Muhammed looked like when he was alive?

Then I would say:

You do not know what Mohammed looked like. We do not know what Mohammed looked like. No one knows what Mohammed looked like. Why are you, Muslims, upset by images depicting someone who cannot possibly be Mohammed? [1]

I mean, were we to take away the label Mohammed, would the picture still be of Mohammed? How can it possibly be Mohammed simply because a set of infidels says that it is Mohammed? We are not Muslims. Why do we have the right to define how Mohammed appeared when he was alive? Do you Muslims, by a threat of violence, have the right to define what we can and cannot print in our newspapers? Even if it is offensive, why do you, as Muslims, have the right to use violence against those who disagree with you?

Throughout the Muslim world there are images of Christians and Jews as dogs and monkeys. Throughout the Muslim world there are images defaming America as a vile and evil land. Do you see US burning your embassies in protest? Do you see US killing your citizens in reprisal?

When 9/11 occurred and many in the countries of Islam danced in the streets, did you see US murder Muslims in our country? No, you saw Christians guarding the mosques of our fellow citizens and trying to calm things down in our communities. You, who are Muslims, saw our President try his best to keep the Muslims in this country from being attacked.

You can make the case that we attacked Afghanistan without provocation. We see it different. The Afghans see it different. They are free now. Under the Taliban they were not. The Afghans have sworn to the whole ummah that they prefer to live as they are now instead of how they were living before. Why won't the members of Islam listen to them?

You can make the case that we attacked Iraq without provocation. We see it differently. The Iraqis see it differently. The Iraqis are free now. They cried out to their Muslim brothers to free them from Saddam and no one came to help them. They were slaughtered by Saddam. Like an abusive father Saddam killed and killed. His sons raped and found all manner of wicked ways to torment the citizens of Iraq. Why didn't the members of Islam hear them and come to their rescue?

You who are of Islam scream, cry, whine and beg that we give you proper respect. Why should we? Respect is earned, it is not given. What have you in Islam done to earn our respect? We send our children to free your people in Somalia, Serbia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. When an earthquake hit Bam in Iran, were we not the first country to provide help, even before the mullahs in Tehran sent help? When the tsunami hit Islamic countries, were we not the first people to respond to your cries for help? How are our children treated? Are THEY treated with respect? Of course not, in many cases their heads are hacked from their bodies and then their bodies are dragged through the streets and burned. If you say that our children deserve it for trying to impose our will on you, I wonder at your sanity. Ask any of our warriors. Ask them whether they wish to be in your countries. Ask them and to a man and woman they only want to come home. We do not wish you to do our will. We only want you to stop trying to force us to do your bidding because you use violence unless we do your bidding.

We have forced Afghanistan and Iraq to become democracies because it was the only way we saw to stop them from harboring Irreconcilables bent on killing us. You in Islam keep screaming that we tempt your children to do evil. We tempt our own children to do evil. If you want your children to ignore us, then offer them something better than we offer them.

I want to point out that Hitler in Germany thought that Americans were weak. Good Germans in Germany stood by and let him attack us. Bad Germans cheered him on. Dresden came and the good Germans joined the bad Germans in the ashes of that city.

Tojo thought America weak. The good Japanese stood by and let him attack us. Good Japanese joined bad Japanese in the ashes of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

I beg of you good Muslims. Restrain the bad Muslims from attacking us. We have been unable to stop them from doing this. If YOU stand idly by and let the bad Muslims attack us, sooner or later you will become involved in a bad way. The good Germans in the ashes of Dresden call to you and try to make you aware that THEY did nothing and look where it got them. The good Japanese in the ashes of Nagasaki and Hiroshima call out to you and warn you that standing by and doing nothing is NOT a good idea.

I am but a voice from the velvet black calling to you across the gulf of our mutual incomprehension and I say to all good Muslims in this community: CHOOSE or let the bad Muslims choose for you.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 3

2006-03-04T12:44:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 3

All of these things I would have debated in the pages of the letters of the editor of all the papers in Texas, because we have got to do something. The way civilized people in this country act when they are upset about something is that they debate, they do not use violence and threats of violence to settle their differences.

We are in a war against the Irreconcilables. In certain ways, the war is very like World War I. We are involved in trench warfare. The idea being that we fight at the first trench and then fall back to the second trench and so on until we are unable to fall back, because we are at the last trench and must die to the last man to protect our country. Except... The other side does not like to charge our positions head on. The Irreconcilables like to attack our will to hold that first trench. They want us to move back to the next trench without fighting much at all. They wish to use our compassion for their poverty and suffering under their rotten leaders to sap our strength and make us unable to hold to our beliefs... In essence they want us to give up many trenches without much of a fight.

This war is not exactly like any we have had. The Cold War is the closest we have ever had. The main difference is that the Soviets were not willing to die to the last man for their cause. The Irreconcilables are. Or rather the leaders of the Irreconcilables are willing to spend the lives of all their followers until they themselves are left... at which point they will call for a truce while they scramble to find other useful idiots to die for their cause. A very self-centered bunch, the leaders of the Irreconcilables. They worry about themselves, but everyone else is just a piece on the game board for them. If you think Osama bin Lauden cares for anyone, but Osama, you are sadly mistaken.

All I am saying is that we should be willing to fight at the first trench, not the last. If we fight over these cartoons, maybe the good Muslims will get the idea that it is in their best interest to rein in the bad Muslims. Probably not, because I don't think there is a single Muslim out there in the black who believes that we are that tough. They turn out in their mobs and chant their slogans and assume that it scares us enough to back off. When we DO back off and apologize and pay the equivalent of the dane-geld, then the Irreconcilables are heartened and assume that we will never stop giving up trenches.

I say that we have to turn and fight now instead of later. If we do not think that our country and Western Civilization is worth the trouble, then we should give up now, because fighting at the last trench is ALWAYS a bad idea.

If you fight to the last man at the first trench, then you have plenty of people behind you who can take over when you fall. Your logistics is still new and plentiful. Your second line troops are still fresh and can step up and take over. Your second line troops can carry the battle to the enemy's territory.

If you wait until you are at the last trench, you and the people in the last trench are it. There are no more people left to fight. Your logistics are worn and ready to break. Even if you do win, the enemy can still follow up and you are fighting on your own territory.

It is stupid to make a last stand at the last trench when you know you face people like the Irreconcilables. You fight them now or you fight them later. No amount of dane-geld will make them go away.

I want to bring up something I discovered in passing. During the 1930's there was huge disarmament movement in England. The disarmament movement believed that if England were to disarm, all the evil people of the world would leave England in peace. Their thinking went that since England would leave defenseless people alone, so would everyone else in the world. What it got them was World War II. Winston Churchill screamed against this train of events until he was blue in the face. No one listened. Neville Chamberlain went to Munich and got "Peace in Our Time" in September, 1938. A year later, Poland was invaded and World War II began.

Paul Harvey in one of his shows said:

"Following New York, Sept. 11, Winston Churchill was not here to remind us that we didn’t come this far because we’re made of sugar candy. So, following the New York disaster, we mustered our humanity. We gave old pals a pass, even though men and money from Saudi Arabia were largely responsible for the devastation of New York and Pennsylvania and our Pentagon. We called Saudi Arabians our partners against terrorism and we sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq, and we kept our best weapons in our silos. Even now we’re standing there dying, daring to do nothing decisive, because we’ve declared ourselves to be better than our terrorist enemies -- more moral, more civilized. Our image is at stake, we insist. But we didn't come this far because we're made of sugar candy. Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and into this continent [by giving small pox infected blankets to native Americans. Yes, that was biological warfare!] And we used every [other] weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever. And we grew prosperous. And, yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves. So it goes with most great nation-states, which--feeling guilty about their savage pasts--eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry up-and-coming who are not made of sugar candy."

We as a people are not fighting the Irreconcilables all out. Our newspapers, academic elites and various other groups are convinced that the Irreconcilables are just vandals who can be bought off with nice words and a pat on the head. I consider such people to be insane. The Irreconcilables mean it. They want to political entity called the Caliphate. This Caliphate would stretch from Algeria to Indonesia. The Irreconcilables desperately want this Utopian dream, because it will vindicate everything they see in the Qu'ran. Since the last Caliphate died in the 1920's in Turkey, the Irreconcilables see the fortunes of Islam to have fallen. Their belief is that a new Caliphate would be just one step to world domination. Anything less that total subjugation of the entire world is just unthinkable to them.

Again, saying someone wants to take over the world makes me sound crazy. I would just point out that just because it seems impossible, does not mean that the Irreconcilables will not give it their best shot.

My biggest problem with the Irreconcilables has always been that they moved too soon. Had they waited twenty years, they could have had Europe easily. I mean, in twenty years, Europe will be made up mostly of old White people and a plurality of Muslims young people. The best I can figure is that the Iranian hostage crisis where America was humbled, the withdrawal of America from Lebanon, the withdrawal of Russia from Afghanistan, the hasty withdrawal from Somalia, the bombings of our embassies in Africa and of course the first bombing of the World Trade Center made them think we would continue to give up without a fight.

Most people don't know this, but the destruction of the World Trade Center was not what it seems. The Irreconcilables believed that by destroying the World Trade Center they could rouse Islam to their side. They perceived that, if the United States did nothing THIS time, surely the Muslims of the world would be convinced that they would win and would rally to the side of the Irreconcilables. It hasn't quite worked out that way.

I am quite certain that no one expected the cartoon jihad to be such a big hit in the world of Islam. I am also quite certain that the Irreconcilables are trying their best to keep the controversy going, so they can garner the maximum news cover.

The thinking in the press here and in Europe is that if we let it die down the problem will go away. I don't believe it. If we do not fight now, we shall have to fight later over something more important. If we fight right now, the other side will be so surprised they might lose face with their followers. At least that is what it looks like to me. This multiculturalism is the equivalent to disarmament. It only works if the other side believes that their culture is as good as ours.

They don't.

The Irreconcilables believe that their culture is superior to our culture. They cannot comprehend that anyone would not agree with them. What kind of fascinates me is that the United States believes that WE have the best culture on the face of the earth. The difference between the two beliefs is that they have nothing to back up what they believe except feelings. We have something solid to back up our beliefs.

Which belief is correct? If you believe that God guide your every movement, the Islam is the path for you. If you believe in free will, then our way is best. If you want absolute certainty in your life, then Islam is best for you. If you can handle some risk, then our way is best.

Which side will win in the end? I don't know. I would pray it is the side of Western Civilization, but we could still lose if we do not commit ourselves to fight.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 4

2006-03-04T12:37:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 4

Every four years, we in America have a Presidential election. Lately the Presidential race has been none stop even when it is not close to the actual election. The real 2008 Presidential election will start just after November, 2006. Hillary Clinton is of course in for the Democrats. John McCain is definitely in for the Republicans. Whether either will be their party's nominee is still up in the air despite what the mainstream media might see in THEIR crystal ball.

When a candidate gets ready to run for President, he or she comes out with a book about themselves... normally. The book given book accentuates how absolutely fantastic the given candidate is and gives what they hope to accomplish in their time in office. In short it shows what a great guy ir gal they are and what a great agenda they have.

Newt Gingrich has come out with a book called "Winning the future: a 21st century Contract with America". Gingrich is known for big ideas. He is not known for tooting his own horn. I perceive this book as the first part of his run for the Presidency in 2008.

I went out and ordered the book through Interlibrary loan from the A&M library. I didn't want to own it unless it made sense to me. In 1994, Newt came up with the original "Contract with America". The new one is as bold as the old one. New has a ten point agenda.

I. Defend America and our allies from those who would destroy us.

II. Transform the Social Security system into personal savings accounts that will enable every worker to have higher retirement incomes from their own work and avoid the need for financial support from their children.

III. Recenter America on the Creator from Whom all liberties come. We will insist on a judiciary that understands the centrality of God in American history and reasserts the legitimacy of recognizing the Creator in public life.

IV. Establish patriotic education for our children and patriotic immigration for new Americans.

V. Meet the triple economic challenges of an explosion in scientific and technological knowledge, an increasingly competitive world market, and the rise of China and India.

VI. Work to include every American in a system of patriotic stewardship so every person has a real opportunity to pursue happiness as their Creator endowed.

VII. Change the mindset of big government in Washington by replacing bureaucratic public administration with Entrepreneurial Management so government can operate with the speed , effectiveness and efficiency of the information age.

VIII. Balance the federal budget and insist on a lean government, low tax, low interest rate economy to maximize growth in a competitive world.

IX. Insist on congressional reform to make the legislative branch responsive to the needs of the 21st century.

X. Ensure as election process that is honest, accountable, accurate and free from the threat of illegal votes or subsequent litigation.

I read through the entire book in a day or two. The thing that struck me is that Newt has bunches of "I wanna do this" without much of "this is how we're going to do this." I mean, he's got some of the logistics worked out, but by and large he has not thought through how make this agenda work.

There is another thing that I think is absolutely hilarious about this agenda. If Newt Gingrich tries to make this agenda come true, he will be the most hated man in the history of the world. You thought George Bush is hated, damn, Newt will cause some people to hyperventilate every time they think about him.

What I find interesting about this agenda is that Newt has addressed something I had not thought about. The philosophy called Liberalism de-emphasizes the role of God and country in our lives. One of the things that made Hitler think that he could beat Britain was that there was this debate at Cambridge. The thesis of the debate was "Should a person die for God and country." The dons of Cambridge debated long and hard and decided that it was NOT worth it to die for God and country.

If we as American decide that God and country are not worth dying for, then we are pretty much doomed as far as opposing the jihadis, because they DO believe that dying for their cause is a good thing. If we as a people continue down the road that de-emphasizes American exceptionalism and denigrating God as a beard in the sky, then why do would we even bother defending ourselves? Why not simply roll over onto our backs and hope the jihadis won't hurt us too badly.

The Swedish are having problems with rape right now. Their solution: Warn girls not to wear provocative clothes. Yes, indeed. Swedish girls shouldn't tempt those nice Muslim boys to rape them by dressing in hotpants. Right now the Swedes have put their head in the sand and hoped the Muslims will stop doing bad things. Relatively soon, a separate court system will be proposed and passed in some countries in Europe. A secular court system for most people in a given country and a shariah court system for all Muslims.

Without something like the Great Awakening of the 1730's and the 1740's, I do not see how Newt expects to pull this one off. Too many mainstream religions have just about de-emphasized religion in our churches for us to go back to the good old days. I don't know. Newt may just surprise me.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 5

2006-03-04T12:35:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 5

Transforming Social Security into personal savings accounts is one of the projects I have been working on. Social Security is a really bad deal for anyone who is not on social security right now. Every once in a while they do a survey where they ask whether someone believes in space aliens or actually getting full social security benefits. The space aliens always have a bigger percentage of respondents that getting full social security benefits.

People who do not realize that Social Security starts going under in 2018. In 2042, we will have run out of all the funds earmarked for Social Security. Anyone who does not acknowledge this reality has got to pull their head out.

There is one other thing. Social Security is a bad investment. I mean, you put away 12 or so percentage of your income for about 50 years and you get a rate of return of between one and two percent. Those are just numbers. People's eyes glaze over when you start throwing numbers at them.

The central thing you have to remember about Social Security is that it should not be a part of the government. Think about this a minute. Government should be doing things that the private sector cannot or will not do. Why should the federal government be involved with a pension fund system. Back in the 1930's there were very few private pension funds. Now there are thousands. Why is the government still involved with a pension system that has been superceded by the private sector? If you come back with the belief that the government has to hold the cash, because people will not hurt themselves by doing something silly with their pension money, then you are going to have to convince me that the government can take care of me better than I can take care of me. For some reason that DOES makes sense to many people in this country. I mean, the government does not do many things well.

Oh, there is one other thing that most people do not know. Social Security is not a pension fund. There IS not lockbox with money squirreled away for every person on Social Security. About 1960, there was a Supreme Court ruling that said the Social Security is a tax which means that the Congress can do just about anything it wishes with the money. As it is, the Congress issues debt on Social Security and uses the money elsewhere to run the government.

The IOU's in the so-called trust fund can be looked at this way. Suppose you put $10 in your mattress. You charge yourself 10% interest on any money you take money out of the mattress. What if you exhaust all the $10 in the mattress? I mean, what if you have put IOU's in the mattress, plus IOU's for the interest? Where does the money come from to pay off the IOU's plus interest? You can't borrow money from yourself. That's stupid. What are you going to do with that IOU? You can't spend that IOU. You could sell the IOU by borrowing the $10 plus interest from someone, but that just puts off when you have to pay the so-called debt. The Social Security trust find does not exist. It is just a set of entries in the computer that says that people will get paid from general revenues when the time comes. Every dollar spent renewing the paper in the trust fund cannot be used elsewhere in the government.

I know, you don't want to believe that. It doesn't change anything. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. People who get in early make out like bandits, but people born after about 1968 are just SOL unless something is done to privatize the system. If that frightens you that we need to privatize the Social Security System, then I cannot help you. The government shouldn't be in the business of paying for upkeep of the elderly, because it can't do a very good job of it. Inevitably the government screws up and people get screwed.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 6

2006-03-04T11:23:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 13, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 6

One of the points that Newt makes in his agenda is that the medical profession has not used the efficiencies generated by the computer revolution to lower costs. Right now, prescriptions are still on paper. Why? Well, it's always been done that way, so why not continue? The answer is that prescriptions on paper are by and large subject to massive error. Over and over again, pharmacists have to call the doctor to verify what is on the paper. When the pharmacists DON'T call, then you get situations where the patient gets the wrong drug and gets sick from the misprescribed drug.

Newt's solution is that your medical record should be YOURS. You own it. You maintain it up to a point. When a doctor prescribes a drug, then you go to the pharmacist tell him where the prescription is on the web. The pharmacist then gets the correct prescription, issues the correct medicine and updates your record.

When you go to the doctor, you give the doctor permission to look at your record. The doctor goes out on the web, pulls up your record and has a legible record of ALL the drugs you have EVER been subscribed.

Right now, God knows where your medical records are. I am quite certain the records do not contain the detail necessary to help you effectively.

Then there is wellness. Our system of medicine in this country is based on fixing problems. If we moved to a wellness centered regime, then we wouldn't be sick as much when we got older, because we would know up front what we needed to do to stay healthy into old age. Wellness doesn't pay a doctor really well, so it has been de-emphasized. If we had our own medical records, then we could take control of our health using the information in our records and on the Internet.

Hospitals have a tendency to kill people if they are not careful. The paperwork keeps getting screwed up and people suffer. By having everything electronic and centered on the patient not the hospital, then the savings would be huge. Right now, doctors have no incentive to become efficient in providing services to a patient. We can do better.

Well, that's about it for another Monday. I screwed up again and didn't allow enough time to work on my show. Maybe you will go out to my blog tomorrow and write something. You can be the first one to do so.

I now turn things over to MacKenzie Pequa the Third. She will entertain you for the remainder of the night with an eclectic mix of music.

Take it away Mac.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 6, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Index

2006-02-09T06:25:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 6, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Index

Segment 1: Discuss the Jutland Post's publishing of the 12 cartoons and how it is impacting the world right now

Segment 2: How the Jutland Post's publishing of the 12 cartoons impacts the Left in this country.

Segment 3: Pitch the ammendment to Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 and how it can be used to cut down on the pork and markups in the federal budget.

Segment 4: Return to the Hiring Hall Association project. Almost no improvements. I just wanted to see if anyone notices.

Segment 5: Return to The Deprived project. Almost no improvements. I just wanted to see if anyone notices.

NOTE: I do not claim that all of the above is original. Where I have been able to do so, I have given links. If I have plagerized someone else's works without attribution, please give me the link and I shall make an update.

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 6, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 1

2006-02-09T06:07:00.000-08:00

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, February 6, 2006 at about 11pm CST
Segment 1

I spent all day yesterday uploading the scripts for the last nine shows. The tenth show was already out there. I invite you to go out and look at them and make comments. If you do go out to my blog, you have to reset the number of message displayed to some number greater than 100. It was a hard task and I had put it off because it seems like I am all alone here talking to myself. If I am alone, then why worry about it?

However I had one guy say that he actually listened to the show, so I decided to bite the bullet and get on with it, like it mattered.

Eileen and her friend will be gone in a bit. MacKenzie is vegging out here next to me, so she is no help with the Board.

Doing this show alone at night is kind of interesting, because it reminds me of working at the Teague building's computer center late at night back in the late 1970's. There were days when I would go in and not come out for 12 hours or more. The weather sometimes was very different by the time I went home.

I like the smell of the air at 2am in the morning. The spell of wood seems to linger there at that time. The cars have stopped running, mostly. The stop lights are flashing instead of making their regular rounds from green to yellow to red. Mostly it's just me and the night people.

As I said, there is just you and me right now. I am calling to you from the velvet black across the gulf of our mutual incomprehension. I wonder at times whether you exist. I wonder at times whether I exist. We shall see shall we not.

To work...

A symbol has a name, it has a definition and it has substance. I have been making that point for the last two weeks. Most of you, assuming you exist, have thought I was crazy. How in the world can symbols be such important things? How can the misinterpretations of symbols be so important?

Overview of Cartoon controversy

This last week the entire world found out what happens when you mess with someone else's symbols. The Jutland Post in Denmark heard in the autumn of last year that Kare Bluitgen, an author of children's books, could not get an illustrator for a project Mohammed. Bluitgen wanted to explain to Danish children who this guy was that seemed to take up so much of the time of their Muslim friends. It was going to be a standard children’s book with pictures. All of the illustrators the author contacted were worried that Muslims would come and kill them, if they did the illustration.

Denmark, like Norway, Sweden and Finland, has been having problems with their Muslim minority. Because all of the countries in Scandinavian are socialist states, they cannot provide employment for their native born citizens much less the Muslim immigrants. The Muslims have been involved too much in crime in Denmark. No one in that part of the world wants to admit that.

The Jutland Post decided to finally and completely face the problem of having an unassimilated minority using... political cartoons. Yeah, kind of a strange thing to do. They did this by soliciting entries in cartoons depicting Mohammed, the founder of Islam. They wanted to make the point that the Muslims should NOT use violence to make their displeasure known.

Much to their horror, that's EXACTLY what happened. The Danish government has refused to apologize for the cartoons, making the point that the cartoons are in a private newspaper. The government of Denmark HAS issued apologies that say that they are sorry that the cartoons hurt someone's feelings. The Jutland Post HAS apologized for hurting the feelings of Muslims.

Here's where it gets kind of strange. Radical Islam has made the point that ANY depiction of Mohammed is wrong. Why? Well, Mohammed had a problem with idols when he was alive. He figured that if he allowed his followers to make idols of him, they would worship Mohammed instead of worshiping God. He had seen what happened with Jesus and the cross and did not want that to happen. How the message of "worship God, not idols" got translated into "don't make depictions of Mohammed or I will kill you" is kind of weird to me.

Voltimand over at the Bellmont Club said...

If I draw a tree and call it Mohammed, is it a picture of Mohammed? If I put the name "Mohammed" (or better: "this picture of a tree is a picture of Mohammed") under the picture, is it a picture of Mohammed? If, having done so, I erase the name "Mohammed," is it a picture of Mohammed or a picture of a tree? I would argue that there is no difference between the tree and the picture of some human-like person with the name "Mohammed" or interpretive surrogate phrase under it.

I put these interesting conundrum in order to isolate the utter arbitrariness of the notion of "picturing Mohammed." How much of the "idolatry" involved is the consequence of something intrinsic to the picture, and how much of it is a matter of someone drawing a (potentially rather complicated set of semiotic) conclusion that it is a picture of Mohammed and therefore "idolatrous"?

From another perspective: Does anyone know what Mohammed looked like? If you don't know what Mohammed looked like, how can you be sure that a picture of "Mohammed" is a picture of Mohammed, and therefore idolatrous?

This is worth thinking about, because it isolates the functioning political point in this whole silly business: something will make you mad if you decide that that something is something that will make you mad. If it wasn't the picture of "Mohammed" or a Koran down the toilet, it would always be something else. Muslims are angry because anger is what they do with their lives, and of course anger is like one end of an electrical cord: it must be connected to another terminus for the anger juice to flow.

end quote

What is radical Islam doing with this tempest in a teapot? Basically they are making the case that the Danes set out to insult Islam... Period. They missed the point that the Danes were attempting to say that violence in the name of religion is a bad idea. The original project was supposed to promote interfaith understanding. The Jutland Post started this series of events because they were upset that freedom of speech was imperiled by self-censorship. They were attempting to get the Muslims in their country to accept that they were under new rules.

Most of this seems silly to any thinking human being, but to Muslims it is not. The symbol called Mohammed is equivalent to Islam. By depicting Mohammed in a bad light, the Danes appear to be saying that Islam deserves no respect. Could be. The funniest thing I have seen so far is that one of the 12 cartoon has elicited the strongest response. It shows Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. In essence, the cartoon is saying that Islam is violent. How do the members of Islam react to being called violent? They become violent. That's almost self parody.

If this really does turn into a global jihad, they should call it The War of the 12 Cartoons. Is it just me or is that a stupid reason to kill someone?

Freedom of Speech is a symbol. The substance behind the symbol called Freedom of Speech is a means of avoiding violence. Most people will not fight if they can have their say and sit down. We in this country have fought some massive battles and spent a huge amount of money to establish that the press can say pretty much anything. If we back down on this one, I do not know what will happen. I know that Radical Islam will take any backing down by the West as a sign of weakness. The leaders of radical Islam will then demand MORE concessions. Even as we speak, radical Islam is demanding that all countries pass anti-blasphemy laws... except the press in Arab countries would still be able to depict Jews and Christians as pigs and monkeys and murderers.

Did you know that the Washington Post ran a cartoon that defamed the United States military and Donald Rumsfeld? Yes, indeed. It shows this soldier in bed. All four of his limbs are bandaged to indicate that he has lost both arms and legs. A Donald Rumsfeld figure is standing over him saying in essence that he does not care about men and women in the military. How did the military handle it? All six of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent a letter to the editor of the Washington Post saying that the cartoon by Tom Toles was over the top. They asked for an apology by the newspaper and Tom Toles. That was pretty much the end of it. That is the civilized way of handling the problem. There was no hint that the military was thinking of using violence against either the newspaper of the cartoonist.

Radical Islam appears to have found an issue where a good portion of their constituents can agree that something needs to be done to violently punish the Danes for presuming to criticize them. The whole problem is that the West and radical Islam are talking past each other. Just as the Left and the Right in this country have a tendency to misunderstand mutual symbols, so does radical Islam not understand the symbols of the West. Or rather, the leaders of radical Islam know that the West is just attempting to stake out the position that violence should not be used in debating a newspaper article. They're just using it as a method of getting one step closer to a global uprising of all Muslims against the West. When you get right down to it, the Arab Street is willing to believe anything.

Most people did not listen to Osama bin Lauden when he talked about the destruction of the World Trade Center. The idea behind doing 9/11 was to rally all the members of Islam to the side of Osama for a holy war. The symbol fell flat because we destroyed the Taliban and Saddam. That does not mean that radical Islam gave up their goal of rallying all the members of Islam to their side. They just started searching for another symbol.

Somewhere in the last hundred years, the West has gotten to the point where we said that we would give up the right of personal vengeance in order to live a quiet life. The thinking went that, if you as a citizen of a Western country could kill your neighbor for a real or an imagined slight, then everyone would always be on edge. Being on guard all the time causes you to fell insecure. By giving up personal vengeance as an option people could concentrate on living.

Right now a good portion of the adherents of Islam do not accept that personal vengeance is a bad idea. Too many times in this country moderate voices among Muslims have been silenced by a threat of violence. In many cases, the moderate voices never even THOUGHT to give air to their thoughts because they feared for their lives. No, I'm not kidding. Right here in this country there have been cases where Muslims have been threatened with violence for saying things that make other Muslims mad.

Charles Moore at the Telegraph in the UK asked, "Where did they get those Danish flags?" His point is well taken. Denmark is not a big exporter to the Middle East, nor do the Danes have that big a presence anywhere outside northern Europe.

How come there are so many Danish flags to be burned throughout the Middle East? I think the answer is kind of interesting. A bunch of imams from Denmark have been making a tour of the Middle East to stoke the fires of jihad. They seem to have gotten their local contacts to stock up on Danish flags. Come on, get a grip. It's impossible for the people having the demonstrations in Palestine to have gotten Danish flags that easily without planning. Danish flags in Palestine? Helloooo... Earth to the West. Where did flags that size come from? In short, these were not spontaneous demonstrations.

The burning of the Danish embassy in Syria is surely not spontaneous. The reason I say that is that nothing happens in Syria unless the government approves. Syria is having a really big problem. The West is asking some pointed questions about a political assassination in Lebanon. It's pretty obvious to me that the Syrians want to divert attention of their citizens as well as the West... elsewhere. I bet they're going to ask for a handout once this is all over.

The protests in Lebanon were NOT spontaneous. They BUSSED in the protestors to Beirut. Yoohooo... Syria is having a problem with the Lebanese because they assassinated a Lebanese political leader. Doesn't this sound like a dandy way of diverting attention?

Palestine just had an election where a set of terrorists called Hamas came to power. The European Union and the U.S. have decided to stop funding them. Isn't it INTERESTING that Hamas is behind the protests in Palestine? When do you suppose they are going to come around with their hands out?

The Iranians just got "referred to the U.N. Security Council on account of its nuclear program. And guess what: When Iran finds itself in the eye of the storm, which, of all countries, will be chairing the U.N. body? Denmark." Do you honestly believe that the demonstrations in Iran were spontaneous?

The burning of the Danish flags in Iraq were sponsored by a group of terrorist insurgents. At least the mainstream media got that right. It's not spontaneous there either.

Now, I will admit that the protests somewhere in the world might be spontaneous, but I am having a real hard time believing that the original protests in the Middle East are spontaneous. This is another front in the War on Terror. Anyone who says different needs to have their head examined.