“The Church does not have technical solutions to offer for the problem of underdevelopment as such, as Pope Paul Vl already affirmed in his encyclical. For the Church does not propose economic and political systems or programs, nor does she show preference for one or the other, provided that human dignity is properly respected and promoted, and provided she herself is allowed the room she needs to exercise her own ministry in the world ... Its aim is thus to guide Christian behaviour. It therefore belongs to the field, not of ideology, but of theology and particularly of moral theology."

What is possible for the Church is to (a) establish in the minds of its members a "commitment to justice", (b) to offer certain guidelines as to the priorities which they should pursue, and (c) to delineate the special responsibilities of Catholics in seeking to influence the policies of their respective governments.

John Paul II leaves no doubt that, for the Catholic, the central objective of social action is not to be found merely in its political dimension but in "our manner of living", which should reflect the "love of and preference for the poor".  --- Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 1 No 2 (May 1988), p. 4  commentary on John Paul II's new social encyclical, Sollicitudo rei socialis  (http://www.ad2000.com.au/articles/1988/may1988p4_556.html)

Lecture Notes:  The Dishonesty of Stewed Tomatoes

Lecture Notes:  The Dishonesty of Stewed Tomatoes

Pro-reform movement spreads across Egypt

Kefaya gains more ground as coalition group of dissents stages simultaneous pro-reform rallies across Egypt.

By Hassen Zenati - CAIRO

Egypt's pro-reform movement Kefaya (Enough) gained considerable ground when it staged simultaneous rallies across the country in protest at President Hosni Mubarak's unchallenged 24-year-old rule. (http://195.224.230.11/english/?id=13357)

Oh, no, of course  Mr. Franken this also is probably unrelated to Mr. Bush’s policies in the Middle East and the world.  Our young people’s sacrifice in Iraq has all just been a waste.  Yes, yes of course.  What would we do without Mr. Franken’s acute insights?

The Palestinians, the Syrians, the Lebanese, the Saudi, the Egyptians,  no, no, they are all quite unaffected by anything we did. 

Of course, in any event, I supported Mr. Bush’s Iraq policy because Saddam Hussein signed an armistice agreement and then violated it.  Oh, and he attempted to assassinate a former Commander in Chief who lead our forces against him.   . . . Oh, and because the World Trade Center attackers came from and returned back to Iraq in 1993 after the attack, and then he denied our request for extradition.  . . . Oh, and because he sponsored terror around the world including the planners for Bojinka that lead to the second World Trade Center attack.  (We have the copies of his bandked checks that he gave to terrorists. ( http://www.husseinandterror.com/ ))   . . . Oh, and because he was an evil vile man, who murdered over a million people, and would have done worse had we let him, Mr. Franken.  

“Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad offered its condolences to the family of Lamia Abed Khadouri al-Sakri, 50, a Shiite Muslim legislator in the National Assembly who was shot and killed Wednesday at her home in Baghdad. She was the first elected official slain since the parliamentary elections.” --- After nearly 3 months, Iraqi Cabinet approved Oil, defense posts still in dispute, however  Associated Press

“A friend of Khaddouri said she had been singled out because of her outspokenness. "They chose her as a target because she spoke out and took little care whom she criticized," said Haifa el-Azawi, also a National Assembly member. "She was a brave woman and she was talking a lot about the situation." Azawi said Khaddouri's friends had told her that her bodyguards were too young and that she needed better protection.

“ . . . Earlier in the day Khaddouri was interviewed on television, said her brother, Amar abd al-Khaddouri, a dentist. "She was always afraid to be on TV," he said.

“ . . .According to the bodyguard, after she had finished the interview, she said, "I'm afraid they will kill me because I've been on TV."

“ . . . Khaddouri, who was unmarried and in her 40s, shunned living in the relatively protected Green Zone, where some other legislators live. . . .

“. . . One neighbor, a 17-year-old who would identify himself only as Husam, said, “When she was elected to Parliament, I said, 'Why don't you have better security?' And she said, 'God will protect me.’ ” ” 

 --- By Richard A. Oppel Jr. The New York Times  FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2005 

I do not know how you can read this and not know whose side you should be on, Mr. Franken?  Of course, Maureen Dowd can write columns simply stating that there is no connection between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaeda, “no connection” with the second attack on the World Trade Center.  That is all.  The bare unsupported assertion:  “no connection.”    

Lecture Notes:  04-27-05  Populorum Progressio

When I was in High School pope Paul VI said that it was much easier to think of ways to limit the number of people at the table than it was to think of ways to feed all those who were at the table. ( POPULORUM PROGRESSIO,  ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PAUL VI   ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF PEOPLES  MARCH 26, 1967  )(http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_26031967_populorum_en.html)

I reasoned that this is the difference between the engineer and the scientist.  The scientist is free to examine any problem he wishes and solve the problem anyway he likes.  The engineer has a client.  Formerly I had thought the scientist superior to the engineer due to this freedom of  choice.  However pope Paul VI’s challenge caused me to question this judgment.  True the scientist has more freedom but isn’t the engineer’s challenge greater?  It is not enough for the engineer to “solve” the problem, but that solution must conform to the client’s requirements!   Ah!  That makes it much harder.  

Where I live there is a company called Market Engineering.  I think this is a perfect sort of name as both words relate to each other.  You can not have a market without engineering for the market implies choice; choice implies substitution; substitution implies research and development, i.e. engineering.  All research and development departments in companies should be renamed “market engineering” to remind the team members that they serve the market.  Without the market the engineers would have no clients.  They would only be scientists. 

Pope Paul VI was the client.  His “opinion”, values, beliefs, defined “success.”  Of course the problem of too many people at the table can be solved in many ways.  The client however, the “consumer,” determines what values will define the acceptable design solution.

So though I recognize birth control, population control, the term now, (PC), family planning,  is important, (I personally give it preeminence in any development plan), yet I have never been interested in discussing the question separately.  Birth control has preeminence in development planning not just because it limits and prevents the problem from racing ahead of our technology, but for the purely logical reasoning of our science,  for quite independent of any particular economic calculation choice is the supreme value in Economics.  Women should be given choice, because all consumers in the market economy should be given choice.

The preeminence of choice is, in terms of logic or philosophy, a “postulate” or better an “axiom” of  Economics.  As explained elsewhere, (see Wrong at the Max Weber Institute), this is one of the aspects of Economics which makes it a tautology;  a self defined, self referencing system of thought.  First we say that choice is the supreme value.  Why?  We could call on neurophysiologists,  sociobiologists, etc., but independently of these sciences we define the science of Economics as the study of choice, in the same way we define human action as “remunerative action” even though there are many other types of human action.  The science of Economics unfolds from these definitions, postulates, conditions, the way Euclidian Geometry unfolds from its definitions and postulates.  The science having been established we no longer need to justify these axioms, independently of the findings that result from them.  The justification is that it works:  it explains.  

The reasons why the Church teaches that birth control is a sin has never much interested me, in the same way I suppose that a client’s preference for beige in the exterior color of the house never causes the architect to probe deeper, exploring the client’s psyche, childhood traumas, or that sort.  ‘The client wants beige, fine, let’s get on with it.’

It is a matter of indifference to me.  Personally I think the line of reasoning starts with something like, ‘God has a plan . . .’  or  ‘Human action in some matters is prohibited, taboo,  . . .’ etc.  Ho, hum.  The often heard theory that using the “rhythm method”, (based on the estimated time of female fertility),  is a system of “birth control” that is “natural” and somehow in accord with Devine Law,  seems odd, for it first can be seen that this theory contradicts the presumed Law, the thesis that some matters are taboo or that we are not allowed to interfere with “God’s plan”. 

Therefore any claims to categorical necessity are destroyed and the argument must proceed within the system of thought that birth control is acceptable.  (Note that this condition does not arise within the system,  Economics, with respect to :  Choice.  For the system of thought, Economics, does not at any subsequent point contradict its first principle that choice is an unadulterated good.)

Therefore the entire question of birth control must now devolve to subsidiary arguments as to the degree of “possibility” left open to Nature or God in the various contending systems of birth control.  For no system is perfect and it must be admitted that the possibility of conception, and presumably God’s plan is always possible in any birth control system chosen including sterilization.

Or perhaps I am not very clever.  In ‘Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals’, Iris Murdoch warns her readers early on that there are some philosophers who just are not very interested in morals.  My cheeks burned.  Me? 

I am an engineer, I have a client,  the challenge lies in meeting his specifications.  Therefore it can be seen that the more irrational, even self contradictory the specifications, the more,  . . . the more . . . challenging?  No, interesting.  May you live in interesting times.

So, for example, in  . . .  Education:  Apply technology.  Which technology?  Distributive. Self paced.  Scalable.   Inexpensive.   Laser disks.

In Housing:  Manufactured, panelized, utility cores of high value, (plumbing, heating, appliances), multi story high density, existing urban areas.

Food production: Genetically engineered, designed for local climates, reengineer biomass in uninhabitable areas, (see Technical Corrections at the Weber Institute).   

Global Warming:  Control global climate by controlling amount of solar radiation reaching the planet using artificial clouds.  (See Artificial Clouds at the Moynihan) 

Human Engineering:  Increase oxygen uptake of neurons, progressive development, to fully engineered human, Homo Sapiens Engineerus.

For every problem there is a solution.

When I first came to the San Francisco Bay Area I saw an interview with a local executive of Bank of America, or P. G. and E., one of the big local businesses.  I do not recall now the subject but as the interview proceeded I grew ever more alarmed.  “And this is a businessman!” I exclaimed.  “If this is how businessmen talk, if this is the ‘conservative’ establishment,  . . .?  How is this going to work,” I wondered.

And now 25  years later I know.

In the insurance industry there has been a boom in ‘construction defect’ claims.  I have tried to explain that these claims are the natural result of the construction market but no one will listen.  “Why,” they tell me, “Have you seen how much they are getting for their buildings!  Buildings are selling for much more than the cost of construction!” they reason, “So how could this market cause defects?  They can make so much on the building, charge any price they like, multiples of the actual cost.”  

In fact a recent Harvard study compared the price of land, construction costs and actual selling prices and identified how in  Boston, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, Building and Zoning codes have driven up, “inflated”, the cost of housing well over the actual cost of building and in point of fact:  of land.  (Regularly you hear the feeble minded, Ron Owens for example, claim that land is the reason for the higher San Francisco prices.  But the point of the study is that the selling prices are well above even the higher area land costs.)  

( http://post.economics.harvard.edu/hier/2002papers/2002list.html)

Yet my point is just this:  over heated market causes building defects.  Why?  Because consumers must buy buildings the first day they see the place,  sometimes before the place has even been built.  There are multiple offers.  Offers in excess of the asking price. 

So then, they ask me, incredulously,  “Why defects then?  They can get any price they want?  The property turns over before it is finished!  Why defects?”

This is what scarcity does:  distorts markets.  The richest country in the world and in the richest places in the richest country and you have created scarcity.   Because you have bureaucrats like that businessman I saw in the interview in the late 1970’s.  Because the leftists know better than the market.  Because you wanted to “preserve” Mill Valley.  That is the word Peter Coyote used at a Mill Valley City Hall meeting.  “Preserve.”  For whom?  Millionaires like Peter Coyote?  F. . .  ing  dick head.

Counselor:  What is this?

Misplaced aggression.

And no one will take responsibility for it.  You can not go to anyone individual and say “You,  you,  that’s right you.  You did this.”  (Which is one reason I am not much interested in morality.  It seems a gimmick to me.  A confusion of terms as Wittgenstein has shown.  Just define your terms and puff, all the deep questions disappear.)

“We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.”

In Russia, the profit motive having been removed, quality was supposed to go straight to the consumer, the theft of the exploiters having been stopped  . . . what went wrong?

Possibly capital, profit, isn’t theft after all?

Choice makes quality.  Scarcity makes defects.

Get this into your heads.  There is only the market.  There is no “third way.”  There is no socialism.  No communism.  No communalism.  No . . . taunting, leering, mocking, egotists smirking, Ivey League, U. C., Foundation Grant,  (they call Mill Valley, “Trust Valley”,  because of all the self centered ----

Counselor:  What are you doing?

Digressing.

Look.  The consumers do not have a choice.  It is either buy it or lose it.  So they buy it.  The contractors know this.  So yes, the windows were put on without the flashing then the stucco was applied, then the flashing was put on, so?  Sue me! 

Or, rather sue the General, who sues the subcontractor, then the window manufacturer then the stucco contractor, the architect, then they call the insurance broker, and so it goes.

Why?  Because you do not understand economics.  Without choice there is no competitive pressure on the builder entrepreneur.  The habit to check the window subcontractor’s work, atrophies in non competitive environments. 

Wealth is not theft.  Wealth is the promise to participate in future economic interactions.  It is created not by “taking” but by mutual assent of the parties.  Each promises to participate in future economic activities.  That is what those bills are that are  in your wallet.  Promises to participate in some future enterprise, by mutual assent.

In scarcity, as Paul VI noted, this mutual assent starts to break down.  The mutual promises become compromised, “We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us.”

Economics has been mistaught.  Most of you have read your Samulson in college economics.  There you have learnt, for example, that capitalist demand higher returns for greater risk.  This is wrong.  And if you look at how wrong it is you will learn something.  The way it is wrong will teach you much about real economics.

Ludwig von Mises illustrates how it is wrong this way:  An entrepreneur persuades a capitalist to fund a hotel in the mountains.  “Will we make money?” asks the capitalist.  “Are you kidding?” (imagine Sid Rosenberg) “We can charge any price we like there are no other hotels for miles!”   Note that the capitalist does not say:  “In the mountains you say?  Well that sounds risky, I will want a lot more money in that event.”

This is the way the market really works, not the way dusty old Economics professors teach it.  The “risk” and the “rate of return” arise together.  The Chinese have understood this for a long time:  Risk = Opportunity.

But in your “logical” narrow constrained square “rational” Western minds risk and opportunity are two different concepts.  Oh, the inscrutable West!

So the flashing is put on after the stucco because, well, because that is human nature.  Because he can?  Because this is how humans act.  This is why choice is so important. 

So in the 1970’s the bell bottomed, turtle necked, peace necklaced, executive, (ok I added the necklace part), tells us that “Increased zoning regulations are a good thing for the economy, there has been far too much choice in the San Francisco Bay Area”   and 25 years later I am sitting in an insurance office talking to the interview committee of a major insurer and they are looking at me questioningly, shaking their heads, at the very idea that contractors and builder entrepreneurs would  try to pass off shoddy construction onto their insurers because we are in a  scarcity market, created by those “community leaders” of the 1970’s and 1980’s  and 1990’s.

The fashions have changed, in hair, clothes and politics but not the reality of the market.   

Now you tell me.  Where is your morality?

The Marin Senators Boxer and Feinstein were two of those “community leaders.”  They both helped down zone Marin and San Francisco.  They throttled down our market.  Our lives.

Who do you think is paying for those construction defect claims?

Insurance Industry:  We do not pay claims, we finance them.

You pay the claims.  In higher prices.  The cost of insurance is passed on to the consumers, just as taxes are passed on, just as all costs are redistributed by the dynamics of the market.  Again I ask, where is your morality?

Who is responsible?

Boxer?  Feinstein?  The Democrat Party controls Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco.  What percent of people in the Bay Area can afford the median priced home? 15%  What percent in the nation? .01%?  (And if you are in a Red State and are laughing “ha, ha, losers, . . .” think again hillbilly.  Why do you think Dr. Greenspan is raising interest rates?   Because of what the elite is doing in the  Blue States!  Hillbilly.)

Where is your morality?  

The Guardian had a piece on John Paul the Great saying he had “blood on his hands,”  because of birth control and the association of condoms with the reduction of AIDS. 

But where is The Guardian when we discuss how the liberal elite in Britain, and the US, is responsible for the much more direct and obvious conditions here? 

When will you take responsibility for your own social policy here?

It turns out that morality is a problem of definition.

You define yourself into the not responsible position.

Those children in the picture.  Need they go hungry?  You blame the capitalists?  How about you?  How about the restrictions on economic development in the San Francisco Bay Area, across the country, in education, medicine, housing, transportation, etc. etc.

You are concerned about global warming?  Ok how about the restrictions on nuclear power?  How much more could have been done? 

Feed the poor?  But your friends, possibly you, have worked against genetic engineering of food crops.  The market will work around you but we are talking about delay.  Delays that you have caused.  What could you have done to help those children?

You wanted to preserve the ‘neighborhood’ for your fellow millionaires instead of setting an example for the public by tearing down your shabby little plywood suburban villas and building multistory buildings for the people.  How much more could you have done?

For example, the plight of airline pilots whose pensions may be put into a government subsidized pension plan has been discussed as an example of capitalist immorality.  Even  Bob Brinker has expressed dismay.  Why?  You think this is a question of morality?  Why should there be a government program in the first place?  The rich using the government to help themselves?  Isn’t this just like the Social Security System we discussed earlier?  The poor are taxed to benefit the rich.(Lecture Notes:  03-17-05   Betrayal III, Lecture Notes:02-18-05

 Lecture Notes: 02-14-05 trophy hunters,   Requiem @ Funeral Procession (http://www.newruskincollege.com/id23.html ))

The Unions, (who had extremely talented lawyers, bankers, accountants, economists), negotiated with the airlines and took every loose penny they had.  The airlines had billions invested and faced ruin if they did not agree.  After all the money had been taken they then negotiated “fringe” benefits for retirees.  Both parties knew that all the money was already gone.  Gone to wages, fuel, interest payment etc.  The only money left to “negotiate” was the future money.  In the future we will pay your pension.

We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us.

This is a joke.  The airlines had no choice.  This was a labor created scarcity market.  Labor manipulated the market.  They knew it.  Everyone knew it.  Bob Brinker blames airline management but really the problem was that there was no free market for the airlines to contract with another set of flying bus drivers and cocktail waitresses.

Fine.  But now we are expected to weep for the union members who will lose pensions or health benefits?  This is your morality?  This is a gimmick.  All the money was taken, then they said ‘ok,’ as they untied their hostages, ‘in the future, if you should survive,  we want you to agree to pay additional ransoms, our pensions and health care.’

Yeah, right, in the future.  If we survive. Sure thing.

And if you think I am anti union or taking management’s side, you only show how you have taken sides.  I told you before, ho, hum, I do not care.  Your morality is a joke.  The unions, with expert advise, all the advantages negotiated the deals it liked.  But do not come to me now and tell me the companies laboring under the staggering load of these debts are “immoral” for dumping what they can.  Morality has nothing to do with it.

Or rather it has far more to do with it than you will acknowledge.  For starters did the flying bus drivers and cocktail waitresses think to “negotiate” for a national health policy for everyone, including those of us not so lucky to make $200,000 a year flying to Paris three days a week? 

Well?  What is the answer?  You ----

Counselor:  Stop it.

The answer is NO!

Did the GM workers think about health care or national pensions for the rest of us?  NO no no no !!!

Morality? 

You talk to me of morality?  

Those kids in Africa.  In the picture at the top of  this page.  Do they have $95 laser disk players in their village school?  They have courses on treatment of tropical diseases for the village medical provider?  Farming and animal husbandry courses  for the village farmers?  Etc. etc.?  Of course not.

Fifteen years ago I wrote to the Senate about the importance of technology in education.

And what was the result?

Morality?

John Paul the Great has “blood on his hands”? 

Then you must be at the bottom of a sea of blood.

This is why I think morality is phony.

You and your party have blocked the market.  You have stopped development.  Obstruction after obstruction. 

Daily your policies, the direct consequence of your Party’s actions, misdirect hundreds of billions of dollars.  All about you is confusion and destruction.

The children starve.

And you want to discuss morality? You blame John Paul the Great?-------

Counselor:  Don’t say it.  

The last few days I have become completely lost.  My enemies have been on the radio complaining about “those Democrats” because they criticized Majority Leader DeLay for trying to make a “political issue” out of Terri Schiavo.  “God’s gift to the Republicans.”

“And now those Democrats are trying to make a political issue out of it themselves!”  These are the people who destroyed my life?  Dogs.

They can not distinguish between DeLay’s attempt to use the shameful tragedy of one family’s dispute over ending life support for a dead girl, and the justified criticism of DeLay for this attempt?

I have been set upon by dogs.

When I first started this site, after several posts on this site about Mrs. Jack Swanson, she started calling in sick.  I would make a post and she would call in sick.

Finally, one morning, Lee Rodgers, called her on the phone and started arguing with her.  Shouting at her.  He refused to go on the air without her.

She said she was proud to be “vicious” but when exposed on this little web site she would not go on the air.

Was that morality coming up in her? Shame?  She helped destroy a man and now she felt shame? 

No, she soon got over it.

She was soon back on the air saying stupid things about Democrats and DeLay. 

Such a confusion in the world. 

Morality?

I tried to help get laser disks for the children of the world and I have been set upon by dogs.

Who can be held responsible for what?

“A common cause of compression fractures is the disease osteoporosis. This disease thins the bones, often to the point that they are too weak to bear normal pressure. The thinning bones can collapse during normal activity, leading to a spinal compression fracture. In fact, spinal compression fractures are the most common type of osteoporotic fractures. Forty percent of all women will have at least one by the time they are 80 years old. These vertebral fractures can permanently alter the shape and strength of the spine. The fractures usually heal on their own and the pain goes away. However, sometimes the pain can persist if the crushed bone fails to heal adequately.”  ---- Chief Editor , Kenneth Kurica, MD, Managing Editor Randale C. Sechrest, MD, Editorial Board Richard Lazar, MD  Brent Dodge, RPT

Liars for Christ.

Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck both repeatedly claimed that Michael Schiavo had attempted to murder his wife.  For proof of their charge both offered the evidence of a nurse who claimed she discovered an empty insulin bottle and multiple hypodermic needle holes in the patient Schiavo’s body.  However neither Beck nor Hannity ever mentioned that the Schindlers declined to call the nurse to testify in a 2003 evidentiary hearing.  Nor did they mention that the judge in that same hearing specifically mentioned the failure of the Schindlers to call the witness to give her evidence.  These facts were never mentioned by Beck nor Hannity, and we learned of them only because of the reporting of Randi Rhodes. ((Only the liberal talk show host was willing to report the whole story, the facts, and let us decide.)  I hate to be the one to break the news to you Randi, but you are a temporal being too.)    

The nurse claimed that she contacted the police and reported the crime at the time of discovery.  However, FOX News contacted the police department and reported that the nurse did not in fact contact the police as she claimed.  Bill O’Reilly several times reported on the air that FOX had proven the nurse’s claim to be false.  Yet Sean Hannity, who also works for FOX TV, not only did not correct the record but he continued to report the nurse’s claim that she had contacted the police;  despite FOX’s reporting to the contrary.  Why?  This seems neither fair nor balanced.  Can FOX report the same story several different ways?  Does it have standards for accuracy or not?

Both Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck offered as further evidence of Michael Schiavo’s attempted murder the unsubstantiated claim that a “bone scan” had  revealed that the patient Schiavo had numerous “compression fractures.”  They both listed the bones with “compression fractures,” including a rib bone and a wrist bone.  However, neither Sean Hannity nor Glenn Beck seemed to understand what a compression fracture indicated.

Bones do not normally fracture on compression.  Fracturing on compression, in normal use, indicates that the bones have weakened.  What might cause a bone to become so weak that it fractures in normal use?  If, for example, the body were deprived of calcium in the patient’s diet, due to starvation, for example, then the body might compensate for the loss of dietary calcium by taking calcium from the body’s own bones, and thereby weakening them to the point that they would fracture. 

Yet both Hannity and Beck pointed at Michael Schiavo as the cause of the compression fractures and demanded a criminal investigation.  There was no claim of beatings of Terri Schiavo, who was seen regularly by both her family and friends prior to her heart attack.  In fact Hannity and Beck offered no evidence except the unsubstantiated claim of the nurse, who was proven to be a liar by FOX, who was not called in 2003 by the Schindlers, and  the “bone scan” which they claimed showed “compression fractures”.    This latter evidence, if true, far from strengthening their claims, actually undermined their own arguments.  It would rather serve as additional evidence that the patient’s eating disorder caused not only the heart attack but the bones to weaken to the point that they fractured in normal use.

That both Hannity and Beck appear not to have understood this,  that they were undercutting their own argument, is not only not surprising but typical.  And if you think that either of these Christian gentlemen will be ashamed of their repeated lies, now that they have been exposed here, you would be wrong.  They believe they were lying for a good cause.  They see themselves as liars for Christ. 

Hannity has started bragging about his years of study in a seminary and Beck often will talk of his hour in the Garden of Gethsemane ---  before making a sleazy segue to a commercial.  (After we first mentioned his “wink wink” segue from Jesus to commercial, he complained on the air that he did have to after all have commercials.  (But we were not criticizing the commercials but his smarminess.))    

They both claim the absolute good of their convictions even as they lie.  They claim righteousness yet when pressed defend lies by reference to the instrumental value of their lies.     

For example, they introduced the fraud Dr. Hammesfahr as a “Nobel Prize nominee.”   (He claims his congressman sent a letter to the Nobel committee.)  They  know that this constant association of this quack with the Nobel Prize is another lie but they feel these lies are justified to “save Terri’s life”.

Dr. Hammesfahr’s claim that the patient Schiavo could speak was not questioned by either of our Christian gentlemen liars.  And they offered no reasoning to explain why this, their sole expert, was in the minority of doctors who had examined the patient.  Nor could they explain why the judge in the case could find no published papers by their “Nobel Prize nominee.”   Instead they repeatedly made the claim that “the majority of affidavits from medical doctors” support their position.  Affidavits?  See?  Affidavits that is legal talk.  That this coven of doctors had not actually seen the patient nor had any evidence to give in the case was of course never examined.

Nor did Beck nor Hannity ever mention the inconvenient facts about their Dr. Hammesfahr:   “In February 2003, the Florida Board of Medicine ruled . . .” ---- Media Matters (http://mediamatters.org/items/200503220002 ) .

Given their credulity of Hammesfahr’s claim that the patient Schiavo talked to him who can be surprised that Hannity and Beck accepted without question the Schindler family claim that the patient Schiavo told them “I want to live.” 

What if the Schindler family had claimed that an Angel or that Mary, the mother of God, had appeared in the Hospice room?  Would Hannity or Beck have questioned this testimony?

Indeed they spiraled down each day damaging their credibility.  They began to exhort their audience to question not only the Florida judges but after an act of Congress the Federal judges too.  Who are you going to believe Hannity and Beck or these State and Federal judges?

And the answer came back that the people agreed with the judges and not our Christian gentlemen liars.  (http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/)  So Hannity and Beck attacked the polls too!  And the politicians that went along with the Liars for Christ also fell in the polls.  Mr. Bush is still falling.  (www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ articles/A43180-2005Apr11.html )    

I was originally targeted by the liberal-radicals of the San Francisco Bay Area because I was a conservative Republican who had written letters to President Bush and the U. S. Senate.  So you might suppose I would be sympathetic to his son’s fall in the polls.  I am not.  Nor do I feel anything but contempt for the “conservative” Congressman Mr. DeLay who joined in with Hannity and Beck in attacking the judges:  “The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.”

And how do I know Mr. DeLay was wrong?  He has himself admitted his error.  But not Hannity and Beck.  Having dragged our party down they fell even further.

Both next targeted the Hospice.  Both spoke with dark suspicion of the place that had by all reports kept the patient Schiavo in good health for years.  And Beck joined Michael Weiner in describing the Hospice as a “death camp” for the “extermination” of patients.  And what were Beck and Weiner’s exhortations but an attempt to provoke violence against the Hospice?  If the Hospice is murdering people then isn’t violence justified against the murderers to prevent them from “killing” others? 

Indeed isn’t this the reasonable interpretation of Mr. DeLay’s words?  And is this not part of the reason for his apology for his words?

But Beck and Weiner did not apologize.

Indeed Laura Ingraham, “livid,” joined in.  She  accused those who disagreed with her, society, of being part of the “culture of death.”  This is her accusation against the society that carefully reviewed this case for fifteen years, collecting and confirming, exhaustively, the overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that the patient was gone, had died years before.  But “culture of death” was Laura Ingraham’s charge against a society that spends 50% of its medical dollars in the last six months of life. (http://www.bioethics.umn.edu/resources/topics/end_of_life.shtml#fact )

Half!  We do everything we can do to stave off death.  Everything that is humanly possible!  Half our money spent in the last six months and this “livid” neurotic, in an emotional fit,  accuses us of being “the culture of death.”

And when we first posted this criticism of her, (see Lecture Notes:  March), Laura claimed that she was only concerned that there was no “documentary evidence” of the patient Schiavo’s intentions.  Then in our next posting we called Laura Ingraham’s claim that she was concerned solely about the absence of “documentary” evidence, a lie.  We pointed out that we expected better from a lawyer.  We  pointed out that her emotionalism was no help to anyone trying to decide how we should proceed.

So then in her next show she claimed that she could distinguish this case from the thousands of other cases that doctors and families must deal with every week .  “Distinguish” cases.  That is how they talk in law school.  The young law students have to be taught how to “distinguish” cases.

She offered that she was only concerned with cases in which the family disagreed with the with drawl of life support.

Oh, great!  That is a big help Laura.  Yes thank you.  Of course the only cases that come to court are the cases where some family member disagrees.  That is all the cases.  What we want to know is how to resolve the cases where there is disagreement!  That is the whole point.  Or are we going to give everyone a veto?

Now let us stop for a moment and remember that Laura is smarter than me.  So why is she and the others making such obvious mistakes?

Nor does Laura Ingraham deal with the Texas law, signed by George Bush, that authorizes the withdrawal of life support in “futile cases.”  Does not even mention it.  Nor does Beck, Hannity, or Weiner.  A fine pack of liars.

At any time Laura et al. could have organized a political campaign to write a Florida State statute on this subject.  They did not.  The judges followed the statute.  Federal review determined that the petitioner failed to show a “substantial likelihood” that he would prevail, i.e. prove that the Florida courts failed to protect the rights of the patient Schiavo.  Laura Ingraham never did explain how she would resolve disputes of a similar type, which take place every week.

The complaint about the courts was that the judges did not write new law, did not seek and outcome  different from that which the People, meeting in the Legislature of the State of Florida, determined was the best way of resolving such disputes.  Isn’t that what we mean by “judicial restraint”?  Isn’t this what conservatives believe?

And as we take the inventory of casualties in this engagement, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Michael Weiner, Glenn Beck,  George Bush, Tom DeLay, Rush Limbaugh, William Bennett,  Bill “killing” Kristol, Tucker Carlson, Debra Saunders, and her husband, the author of the book, “the Culture of Death”, Wesley J. Smith, Barbara Simpson,  Brian Sussman,  Lee Rodgers, and the despicable Mrs. Jack Swanson,  what can we conclude?

What of the law?  What of the science?  Wither truth?

What are we to make of Beck and Weiner accusing society of “extermination” and the others whose accusations of “judicially sanctioned murder” were made not a month after a Federal judge in Chicago found her family in a pool of blood. And all of this at the same time Weiner is ridiculing the mentally ill abandoned on our sidewalks, or Beck the disabled children riding in the back of “short busses” with “helmets on their heads”?

Weiner advocated rounding the homeless up off the sidewalks and shipping them to death camps in the desert.  Hannity and Beck both have segments on their shows were they call up people and ridicule their lack of knowledge of current affairs, etc.  (In one broadcast a caller called in to stump Beck by showing that Beck could not spell the word “peace.”  It worked.  Beck was taken by surprise and his producer had to break in to explain, “p-e-a-c-e.” )

But these people, the mentally ill abandoned to the streets, or the ones in the “short busses,” these are exactly the ones we did not “kill,” these are the ones in those hospitals upon whom we spend 50% of our health dollars, these are the ones we try to keep alive.  And these are the ones Hannity, Beck, and Weiner ridicule every week. 

And of course, Weiner and Mrs. Jack Swanson are the ones who have for a period of years harassed me, following me from place to place, work place to work place, with Don Imus and Ron Owens and Michael Krasney.  We know that in their private lives they are despicable people.

Then too so do many of you.  You know and do nothing.

And here in this case of the patient Schiavo, we have seen them, hypocrites, liars, thoroughly dishonest. 

Mr. Bush signed the law in Texas that provided for less review than this Florida case received.  Mr. DeLay has himself apologized.

Not one of them discussed the CAT scan or even acknowledged that the consensus of medical opinion was on the other side of the case from their simple minded emotionalism.

Just in terms of debate tactics, one never leaves off and important piece of evidence.  The CAT scan should have been at least mentioned if only in passing.

And more fundamentally if the collected evidence argues against your position why not revise your position if you can not explain the evidence?   If the CAT scan suggests a Persistent Vegetative State why not alter your preconceived views? 

They could not discuss the CAT scan because they knew it contradicted their position and they could not defend their opinion.

So the charges of NAZI and “the culture of death.”  Call the Hospice a “death camp.”  Call the judges, the legislature, then finally the public wrong. 

Mrs. Jack Swanson boasts, “Oh, I’m vicious.”

I do not know how to separate out all this from what they have done to me.  My mind turns first to the Red Comedian on the West Coast Weekend show on KQED, to Yvonne sitting in her office, lying to me, week after week, the secretary at GAB Robins going through my briefcase, the San Rafael Police dispatcher reporting on the movement of the “Colonial Motel Suspect,”  the adjusters in Portland Maine talking about my mother’s death before I learned of it, the trash talking druggy Scott Bobro at Farmers, and that Farmers agent in Marin, insisting again and again that I tell him my address, “where do you live?  Where do you live?” he demanded.  The dishonesty.  From top to bottom.

I do not understand you.  How do you justify yourselves?  How do you live with yourselves?    

And then the new pope tells the cardinals that relativism "recognises nothing definitive and its final measure is no more than ego and desire".  You see?  They know the absolute.  They are on the side of absolute Truth, Goodness, God.  This is how they justify themselves.  They are Liars for Christ. 

“Destiny.  My destiny!  Droll thing life is-- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose.  The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself--that comes too late--a crop of unextinguishable regrets.  I have wrestled with death.  It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine.  It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary.  If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hair's breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say.” --- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Africa's last chance, World Bank warns

April 18, 2005

Washington - World Bank president James Wolfensohn has urged global action to help Africa meet targets to slash Aids and poverty by 2015.

He said that this year provided a "last opportunity" to make the necessary changes if Africa was to meet the so-called Millennium Development Goals.

"Looking ahead, and with just a decade to go to 2015, achieving the (goals) presents an enormous challenge," he told a meeting of the International Monetary Fund's policy-setting committee in Washington.

Africa has been hardest hit by HIV infections. The Great Lakes region is home to more than 6-million people infected with the virus, according to World Bank figures.

Last week the bank approved a $20-million (about R125-million) grant to step up the fight against Aids in the six Great Lakes countries: Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. - Sapa-AFP.

 What are you doing?

Lecture Notes:  4-14-05

Conditions of Time and Place

Pope John Paul the Great was born in the East and lived for years in a Marxist state.  His view of the market was colored by Marxism and by the Church’s own teachings about the market, commercialism, consumerism, usury, (i.e. the charging of interest).

Like most classically educated philosophers he found the theories of the market as disturbing as classically educated physicists found the new physics of the quanta;  e.g. Dr. Einstein’s “God does not play dice with the universe.”

Can “value” really be so ephemeral as to be nothing more than the transitory subjective evaluation of the consumers in one fleeting moment in time?  Are there no absolutes?

So, because of his limitations of time and place he was skeptical of the market.  He could not accept that the “market” was encoded in our genes, that it works because it is the direct expression of how we are wired, how we think, perceive.  He thought that this was a question of “ideology.”  In philosophical terms the market may be regarded as a theory of how to organize society and that communism is another competing theory.  But this is not quite right.  True they are both of them “theories” yet only a philosopher can find this equivalence meaningful.  

Our market theory results from the study of human evolutionary development over millions of years, with conscious and deliberate study of market interactions as a subject of scientific inquiry over the last several hundred years.  Communism was merely the result of a few philosopher’s speculations founded on the false notion of “scientific objectivism” developed in the Nineteenth Century, and shown to be false both analytically and by practical experiment in which several individual countries were walled off with one side being the experimental portion and the other the control. 

Communism’s failure proved that there is not an “objective” one best way despite the appeal of this idea to our simian minds.  This idea of an objective “best” is appealing to the human brain because the social animal man, this social predator,  evolved in a social organism, a social structure of dominance hierarchy, of progressively “superior” power organization, culminating in the leader, the best, God.  This single hierarchical structure of the best, though intuitively appealing, does not correspond to reality, in which there are various contending values, which arise and decline over time in our minds,  which is  itself an ever changing pattern of neuron networks, ideas, spilling into consciousness joining with other neuron networks, and for which a marginal increase or decrease can be noted but to which no single absolute “objective” value can be affixed.   

The way we define our human ancestors in archeology, the way we distinguish ourselves from the other ancient great apes,  is by the presence of tools among the fossils.  Tools?  (It is a male thing.)  ‘Property’,  is better.  Stone Age property among the fossils.  We have the bone needles and knives too.  And then too there is all the other property which we have not inherited.  The mats woven out of reeds, the animal skins.  We have the sea shells, but not the utensils made of leaves, bark, twigs, gourds, all those female things whose existence we can guess at; but over the millions of years, all of these have been reduced to dust, only the stones, and bones, and sea shells remain, proclaiming:  these were mankind’s ancestors:   Owners of  Property.   

Then there is all the “real property”, the territory, that the ancient ancestors guarded; again all this can only be guessed at from anthropological observations of modern human hunter bands, and by inference from our field studies of our fellow creatures.  More attention has been paid to the ‘competition’ between hunter groups than the cooperation within the hunter communities.  (Again a male thing;  another limitation of time and place.)  I think John Paul the Great would have appreciated the find of the toothless skeleton about whom it was theorized he had been cared for by someone, a whole group of someones. .(http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/PA_NEWA25125781112785897A0?source=)  Not all churchmen would have.  Even today some churchmen would have been threatened by the dating:  7 million years.  (More limitations of Time and Place.)   But he was not afraid.

However, the problems he identified were not themselves the product of the market but were rather problems resulting from our  failure to utilize the market;  the failure to use our human creativity.  This failure results from two reasons:

One, the most common reason for the failure to use the market is the limitation of time and place itself, i.e. the universe.  Ludwig von Mises relates the story of the Menshevik at an early communist congress, who, after listening for hours to one Bolshevik speaker after another denounce the “exploitation” of the workers, stood up and shouted,  “The universe is the greatest  exploiter!” 

Just that, the brutal cold universe is the main reason for our failure to use the market.  The universe gives up its secrets only grudgingly.  Our simian brains grasp the meaning only haltingly, painfully.   We do not know how to develop energy more efficiently, or mine minerals, or grow crops,  all the things we do not know how to do, these are what prevent us from utilizing the market. 

This failure is not the failure of the market mechanism itself, as Ludwig von Mises points out, if the capitalists can be faulted for anything in this respect, it is there utter credulity, their sometimes laughable willingness to “try” seemingly anything.  He notes for example, that the constantly heard claim of a  100 miles per gallon carburetor sitting in a safe deposit box in a Detroit bank vault is not believable if only because of the accumulated evidence that in a  market economy  no idea is unfunded for long.

But the more obvious and vexing cause of all the rest of the world’s grief, which John Paul the Great observed, is again not the result of the market but rather results from the  unwillingness of humanity to allow the market to operate.  Thus the second cause for our failure to use markets to end suffering then, is the failure of governments, society, us, our failure, to establish stable legal environments in which the market can operate to end human suffering to the extent alleviation is humanly possible. 

One wishes for the opportunity to tell John Paul the Great that we ought not blame the market for our grief  but the unwillingness of humanity to allow the market.  The market is the most efficient way of organizing human action. (The name of Ludwig von Mises’ book.)   If the first problem in utilizing markets can be surmounted,  i.e. if we can overcome our human ignorance, then the only thing standing between ourselves and the alleviation of human suffering is not the market but our shameful disorganization, or irrational obstruction of the market.

As George Gilder pointed out in his ‘Wealth and Poverty’,  reversing a liberal piety :  “Crime causes poverty.”   It is easy to see that Mugabe  in  Zimbabwe, for instance, is a villain whose policies have run that country into ever more hideous poverty.  However the clarity of our observation misleads us into supposing that here in America all is right with the world and markets are busy ending human suffering.   

In housing, education, medicine, transportation, agriculture, electrical energy production, oil and gas, the currency and banking, in fact in every sector of the economy our interference with the market is sometimes far more invasive than anything Mr. Mugabe has ever contemplated in his little basket case of a country, and perhaps our interference is in many instances more destructive to the operation of the market, yet we are unaware of the damage we have done, are doing this very moment, only because our vast wealth is matched by our vast stupidity, selfishness, which blinds us to the harm we do, are inflicting on others, our fellow if anonymous countrymen, protected as we are by our thickly wadded  ignorance. 

Counselor: . . . What is it?  Why have you stopped . . . what’s wrong?

Nothing.  It is better to continue,  it takes my mind off the time running out.

Counselor:  But you want to come here full time don’t you?

Yes.  Yes of course.  It is just, . . . you know, the change  . . . from living. 

04-29-05:

Gosh Mr. President.  Where did that come from?  If you did that in 2004 you would have won in a landslide.  You been studying up?

Counselor:  So you thought his press conference went well?

Well?   Who was that?  He was articulate.  He was in command of the facts, detail.  He was humorous.  Thoughtful.  What’s not to like?

Counselor:  Well . . .

What.

Counselor:  Well, like you say, it is not very flattering to be so surprised.

Right. Right.  Fine, Mr. President, sir.

Counselor:  This doesn’t change our plans does it?

No, not at all.  It is just . . . ironic.  I mean now I can die.     

The horror!  The horror!

The horror!  The horror!

Hey!   Laura look:  The Dartmouth Review!

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:O-8FeklH3wEJ:dartlog.net/news/index.index+%22new+ruskin+college%22&hl=en

http://dartlog.net/news/2005/04/17#Feedster.httpnewruskincollegeblogspotcom200504cultureoflifeatnewruskincollegehtml

http://about.feedster.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnewruskincollege.blogspot.com%2Fatom.xml

Counselor:  That is so pathetic.

What do you mean?  . . . we are helping to educate tomorrow's leaders . . .

One Man, One Vote:

". . .these plaintiffs and others similarly situated, are denied the equal protection of the laws accorded them by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States by virtue of the debasement of their votes, …"

We conclude that the complaint's allegations of a denial of equal protection present a justiciable constitutional cause of action upon which appellants are entitled to a trial and a decision. The right asserted is within the reach of judicial protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.

The judgment of the District Court is reversed and the cause is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Reversed and remanded.

---Baker v. Carr,    369 U.S. 186 (1962) (http://www.tourolaw.edu/patch/Baker/ )

Votes in the U. S. Senate:         0                                       24

This is a Senate that cares more for cattle than people.  Cares more for the health of hogs than the health of our children. 

This is a Senate that represents more acres of wheat than people.  Represents the special interests of its “constituents” not the American people.

This is not the United States Senate.  It is the Ag Senate.  It is the Commodities Senate.      

The people are forsaken.  And if you should make the mistake of writing these Senators, beware, they will destroy you.

“I’ve heard what you do to some of your listeners.”   ---Senator Hatch on the Imus show  

This just in:

And do you not think that Senator Craig can count votes?  . . . in the Ag Senate?

 Alameda County          1,433,741     Idaho  1,393,262

If an Alameda County Supervisor were to propose this he would not be taken seriously.  But because the Senator “represents” not Alameda County but Idaho there is a chance he can over turn our immigration laws from the floor of the Senate, i.e. without a Senate Committee’s approval. 

Such is the power of the Senate that it can raise up such a person to such power!

“WASHINGTON:    Sen. Larry Craig., R-Idaho, could not be talked out of trying to add AgJobs, a farm worker measure that would create a new temporary guest worker program that offered the prospect of legalization and eventual citizenship to migrant workers.

When word spread that such additions might be in the wind, Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Tiburon, Marin, Calif., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, authored a non-binding resolution that no such measures be added. It passed 61-38. But almost immediately after that resolution passed, the immigration provisions began to be offered. More of the same is expected today.

Feinstein was particularly upset at the notion that AgJobs could be considered now.

"This is going to be a huge magnet" for illegal immigrants, Feinstein warned her colleagues during an impassioned floor speech. "Mark my words." That measure, she said, "could bring millions of people into this country - workers, their spouses, their minor children."

Feinstein said bills like AgJobs should go through the traditional committee hearing and debate process.

But Craig has been trying to get his measure onto the Senate floor for more than two years and saw the Iraq bill as his chance. Craig has long said if given a chance on the floor, his bill would pass.”  ----  Dems Try to Sneak Immigration Reform in Iraq Bill

NewsMax.com Wires,  Friday, April 15, 2005

Lecture Notes:  04-08-05

Ah!  Who could have known?

Others Aware of Red Lake Plans, Officials Say

As Many as Four Believed to Have Helped Plot Attack

By Dana Hedgpeth and Dan Eggen

Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 2, 2005; Page A03

RED LAKE, Minn., April 1 -- As many as 20 teenagers may have known ahead of time about plans for the shooting spree that resulted in the deaths of 10 people on the Indian reservation here March 21, tribal and federal officials said Friday.

W.Post: http://www.newruskincollege.com/moynihanmemoriallibrarynewruskincollegecom/id20.html

NYT:  http://www.newruskincollege.com/moynihanmemoriallibrarynewruskincollegecom/id20.html

No!  You don’t say?  Can you imagine?  As many as 20 people?  They Knew?

Fortunately we are surrounded by the lights of “the culture of life.”

And who are they:  the representatives of  “the culture of life”?  People like Michael Weiner, who previously advocated rounding up the homeless and trucking them off to remote Western deserts where they were to be left to die.  He advocated death camps, and the transportation of the undesirables, and the Vice President of the United States of America still went on his show!

He repeatedly avowed that the adherents of Islam were “subhuman”, making no distinction between ordinary Moslems and terrorists, in fact advocating a religious war, (this while our young men were in a war, in several Moslem nations), and despite this Michael Weiner is put on Armed Forces Radio, and broadcast into that same war zone!

Just as there have been repeated attacks on the homeless in this country by fans of the “Savage Nation”, so too we have seen that our soldiers have humiliated, beaten and killed their “Moslem” prisoners, and not one member of our “the culture of life” seems to have “known” that there might be a connection between this dehumanization of a people, over a period of years, the repeated slurs, lies, and incitements to violence and the actual acts --- the killing.  

The same Vice President appeared recently on the Don Imus show, another member of “the culture of life”.

And what can be said of Armed Forces Radio?  Why would they broadcast racial and religious hatred into a war zone?  But then, why would our Armed Forces load 30 soldiers into helicopters and fly them into sand storms?  What was the mission in Western Iraq, or just yesterday in Afghanistan that required that risk?

Were they closing in on the terrorists with the bio-weapons?  ‘Men, this is our last chance to save humanity,’  was that it?

Or was it just that some Colonel could not admit that the flight, “the mission”, could be canceled, grounded until the sand storm passed?  Could not admit that “the mission” was not so important, as to require a helicopter, fully loaded with 30 of our sons, fathers, brothers, husbands, to fly into a sand storm . . . in the night . . .? 

And then the generals at the Pentagon speak in wonder that America does not trust them with her sons. 

They who choose to broadcast Michael Weiner into a war zone, who hand out Xeroxed copies of maps to National Guardsmen who have just that day arrived at the base, and tell them, to “Go out and find the insurgents . . . Present yourselves to the enemy . . . for combat!”   Thus speaks Colonel Blimp.

And you know what?  Those National Guardsmen took those Xeroxed maps and they did go out and “present” themselves to the enemy.  And lived to tell about it.   But that is why America does not trust the bureaucrats in the Pentagon with her sons.  They have come back and told us what is really going on.

We have learned how the flight rules allow fully laden helicopters to be flown into sand storms rather than require the egotistical self absorbed Colonel to explain why his “mission” is so important that he has risked so many lives. 

Did anyone at the Pentagon “know” that needless risks are being taken.  Did they “know” and yet do nothing?  Did they “know” that Michael Weiner was inciting religious intolerance?  Did they “know” that flight rules were allowing needless risk?  Do they “know” that their incompetence is undermining our strategic policy? 

How about you?  Do you “know”?  Are you part of “the culture of life”?   

What else do you “know”?